Age of Discovery
by dharmamonkey
Summary: What happened in the month between Broadsky's capture and the opening scene of "Change in the Game" (6x23)? What happened in the five months between "I'm pregnant—you're the father" and the opening scene of 7x1? A series of short pieces about the moments we missed as Booth and Brennan discovered that theirs was a single life shared.
1. The Next Night

**Age of Discovery**

* * *

**By:** dharmamonkey  
**Rated:** M  
**Disclaimer:** I don't own Bones. I am, however, interested in renting Booth. A five-hour minimum would apply.

* * *

**A/N:** _What happened in the month between Broadsky's capture and the opening scene of "Change in the Game" (6x23)? What happened in the five months between "I'm pregnant—you're the father" and the opening scene of 7x1? What wonderful little moments did we miss in the spaces in between as Booth and Brennan discovered that theirs was a single life shared? This series of drabbles will speculate on what those moments might have looked like. Some will be told from Booth's point of view, and others from Brennan's._

* * *

**Chapter 1: The Next Night**

* * *

A couple of nights after the night Booth and I first made love, it seemed that life was returning to normal for us, except for the obvious. We had another case, and as happened often in the first day or two after getting a new case, nearly all of the first day was spent at the crime scene and then we spent almost all of the following day in the car driving from one witness interview to another. We were both completely drained by the time we returned to his apartment that night. Too tired to turn on the TV or even have a drink before turning in, we collapsed into his bed, exhausted. That night, we made gentle love, each of us clinging loosely to the other with tired limbs as our bodies moved languidly, the path towards release marked by long sighs and soft moans that slowly peaked at the moment each of us came.

But the next night...

Well, the next night was completely different.

It had been a long day for both of us, a day we spent apart. I'd found myself more or less quarantined in the lab trying to isolate a victim's cause of death while Booth followed the lead suspect in a high-speed pursuit through Lafayette Park and down 16th Street, later chasing him on foot through a commercial district of Columbia Heights before finally hopping a chain-link fence and tackling the suspect to the ground while he breathlessly radioed for backup.

As the afternoon progressed, I found I was unable to focus on my work, so consumed was I by worry for him, wondering where he was and what was happening and imagining a hundred different scenarios, some more probable than others, but all of them disturbing as I began to panic when hours ticked by without word from him.

Although on the one hand, such a reaction on my part was completely irrational, I suppose it was only natural under the circumstances. The memory of the day after we first came together—the day I waited in the lounge above the lab, my breaths short and my heart pounding in my chest as I waited for news of the outcome of his attempt to arrest or kill Broadsky—was very, very fresh, as was the day that preceded it when we lost Mr. Nigel-Murray. As I sat there at my desk and waited for his call, I found myself unable to stop thinking about Vincent, laying there on the floor of the forensic platform, blood pulsing out of his chest while Booth held his hands over the wound. Vincent's blood dribbled over Booth's hands in much the same way that Booth's blood had pulsed and dribbled over mine the night he was shot at the Checkerbox karaoke bar.

I sat at my desk, staring at my hands for a moment, then shook my head as I tried to rid myself of such thoughts. But as the minutes passed, one after another, and finally turned to hours without a single word or even text message from him, I began to feel nausea swirling through my belly. I was unable to shake from my mind the thought that I might lose him, the way I almost had so many times before.

_Not now, _I thought. _Not after everything._

When my cell phone finally rang, I was in such a hurry to reach for it that I nearly knocked the device off my desk. I grabbed the phone, saw it was him and answered, nearly croaking my greeting as a wave of relief washed over me.

"Brennan..."

When I arrived at his apartment that night, no sooner had he closed the door behind me than I turned around and pushed him against the door, covering his lips with mine in a desperate, hungry kiss. He gasped in surprise as his back hit the door but I paid no heed as I stroked my tongue along the boundary between his lips, coaxing them apart as a low moan escaped from his throat. Booth answered my kiss, his mouth grasping at mine reflexively as my hands slid beneath the waistband of his slacks and jerked his shirt out. _Skin, _I remember thinking. I had to feel his skin, to feel with my own hands the warmth of his body, to feel him and know that he was really there, alive and present and with me, even as I felt his tongue sweep across my mouth and his hip grind against me.

"Bones," he murmured as he pulled his mouth from mine, his breath coming in pants as his hands flew up to my face. He held my jaw between his palms, stroking his thumbs over my cheeks as he looked into my eyes. His mouth fell open and I saw his jaw shift from one side to the other as he seemed to be considering what to say to me, but no words came. "Shhhhh," he whispered. "Shhhhh..."

I felt my nostrils tingle and burn as tears pricked at my eyes, but I swallowed and opened my mouth to speak, feeling in that moment as if it was somehow better to say something, anything, than to let him see me cry.

"I didn't know," I said. "I waited, but I didn't hear anything from you, and I wasn't sure what was happening." The words tumbled from my mouth, each phrase falling clumsily from my lips in the wake of the one that preceded it. "I wasn't sure where you were, or if you were okay, and all I could think was that something happened to you, and that I wasn't there to have your back and protect you the way I always do, and I kept thinking that maybe something went wrong out there." I felt a painful lump forming in my throat as the words kept coming, and I felt his fingers stroke the sides of my neck as I watched his big, warm brown eyes blink back at me. "I just kept thinking about your hands," I said, "and Vincent, and how you couldn't stop the bleeding, and then about how I couldn't get the bleeding to stop when you got shot, and—"

I felt his thumbs—his strong, thick, calloused, reassuring thumbs—swipe over my cheeks and smooth away the warm tears that had fallen from my eyes despite my every intention not to cry.

"Shhhh," he said again, suddenly letting go of my face and grasping my shoulder with one hand and gently threading the other through my hair. "Bones," he whispered. "It's okay. I'm okay. I'm fine. I saw your messages, baby, okay? But I couldn't text you back because I was in the middle of a pursuit. It's okay, alright?" He smoothed his hand over the back of my head and smiled, cocking his head to the side as he raised his eyebrows solicitously. "Okay?"

I felt his open hand slide down my back and nodded. "Yes," I said as he squeezed my arm in encouragement. "But..." I rolled my lips together and swallowed, blinking away the dampness in my eyes as I struggled to give words to the emotions roiling inside of me.

"What is it, Bones?" he asked me, rubbing his hand up and down my back before bringing it around to rest on my hip. "Tell me."

A dark feeling swirled in my gut and my gaze fell away, and I drew a sharp breath before I looked up at him again. "I need you," I said quickly, the three syllables running together so that it's a wonder they even made sense to him. "I...have to feel you...to know that you're here...that you're alright...that you're here with me and...I just need to feel you, Booth...please..."

I saw his eyes glisten as he nodded back to me, not saying a single word as he placed a soft kiss on my forehead and led me back to his bedroom.

We made love that night, slowly at first as Booth stroked into me, smoothly and tenderly, but as good as he felt inside of me, it wasn't enough. After a minute, I felt a need to feel him, to really feel him, as much and as deeply as physically possible, and so I rolled us over, and the rhythm of our joining became quicker, almost frantic, as the slowness and tenderness of his movements gave way to a desperate need on my part to feel. I rode him hard as I felt my fear burning away into relief with each desperate roll of my hips. He met me, stroke for stroke, driving himself into me as deeply as he sensed I needed him to, and within a couple of minutes, we both shattered, one after the other, and I collapsed on top of him, spent—physically and emotionally. He wrapped his arms around me and held me close to his chest, and in the haze of the moment, I took some solace in feeling him still buried inside of me as I felt his fingers stroke over the damp spot of sweat pooled at the base of my spine.

After a minute or two, I pulled away and rolled off of him, but not away from him. I tucked my body snugly against his and rested my cheek against the round of his shoulder.

But I still felt...odd...

Even after bringing us both to the edge of oblivion and beyond, I felt a certain tingle, a shiver of agitation. As spent as I was, I still felt unsettled.

So I touched him.

I touched him everywhere, my hands and mouth roaming over every inch of his skin that I could reach—his arms, his shoulders, his hips, his neck, his chest, his belly, his legs, his hands and his face—because I wanted to feel him, to know with my own fingers and my own lips that he was alive, and that he was there, safe and alive, with me.

I dragged my fingers across the sticky, sweaty surface of his chest while Booth simply lay there quietly, stroking my hair with his hand as he turned to kiss my forehead, his lips lingering for a few seconds before he turned his head again and stared at the ceiling fan above us. I watched him as I touched him, his eyes open at first as he watched me and then, after a minute, he leaned his head back against the pillow and closed his eyes. I could tell by the rise and fall of his chest and the rate of his respiration that he was awake. I skimmed my hand across his chest, swiping the pads of my fingers over his nipple or the edge of my thumb over his navel. I was surprised but grateful that he was letting me touch him this way and never asked for anything in return. While on other nights, he would have felt my gentle, exploratory touches and been aroused by them, that night he knew, somehow, that I needed to feel him, and so he gave me what I needed.

After a while—minutes, I suppose, though I am not really sure—my racing pulse settled into a normal rhythm, and I nuzzled into the crook of his arm, burying my nose in the space below his anterior deltoid muscle, allowing myself to smell the scent of his sweat with each deep breath I drew. I let that smell, the smell of him I'd grown to know so well over the years, blanket me as I relaxed into the warmth of his body. I felt his arm snake around my waist and pull me closer, and the last thing I remembered before I finally fell alseep was his lips brushing across my brow as he kissed my forehead.

* * *

**A/N: ** _It wasn't much, but it's what the muse delivered, so I hope you liked it anyway._

_Let me know what you thought of that. Share your thoughts, as I've shared mine. Leave a review._

_Thanks for reading!_


	2. Parts Unknown

**Age of Discovery**

* * *

**By:** dharmamonkey  
**Rated:** M  
**Disclaimer:** I don't own Bones. I am, however, interested in renting Booth. A five-hour minimum would apply.

* * *

**A/N:** _People seemed to enjoy the first drabble, so here's another. This time, in Booth's voice._

* * *

**Chapter 2: Parts Unknown**

* * *

It's funny, I guess.

I've been working with Bones for years, and I've been admiring that amazing body of hers for all that time. In a way, I became familiar with her body long before I saw all of it in all of its beautiful glory the night we first made love.

I mean, hell, I've been ogling those fan-freakin'-tastic breasts of hers since, well, the first second I saw her, standing up in the front of that lecture hall at American University in that snug red, wrap-style blouse that hugged every bit of those curves and accentuated her gorgeous bust. No sooner had I noticed her great chest that morning than my eyes wandered lower and I saw her legs, which were long and lean and seemed to go on for miles. And of course, once I took note of those incredible legs of hers, I couldn't help but look up and check out her tush, which was sadly obscured by the flouncy brown, red and yellow patterned skirt she was wearing that morning, but it didn't take me long to figure out that she had a pretty great ass. I mean, hell, I've been following her through doors and down hallways for years, putting my hand right there on the small of her back and admiring the way the curve at the base of her spine flared out right below my hand. And then there's her eyes—those amazing, enchanting, soul-swallowing, heart-racingly piercing blue-gray eyes of hers which, to be honest, was the very first thing I noticed about her.

So it's funny that the part of her that I can't stop looking at these days is her belly, that perfect little belly of hers, because it's never been a part of her I'd paid much attention to before. At least, not until I saw it.

The sight of it that very first night literally took my breath away as I reached down and peeled that old, stretched-out FBI sweatshirt off of her, revealing the most beautiful, sexiest thing I'd ever seen. It's fantastic, the way it just ever-so-slightly curves right above where that nice plane of kissably-soft porcelain skin widens around her belly button and sweeps down to the beautiful triangle of brown curls between her legs. As soon as I caught my breath, I knew I had to kiss it, and I remember looking up at her for a second and saying something like, "Oh my God, Bones, you're beautiful," and then brushing my lips in an oval over that incredible, gorgeous belly of hers as I gently traced my fingers over the subtle, wonderful, womanly curve below her navel. She sucked in a breath as I worshiped that beautiful belly of hers with my lips, spending more time on that little piece of heavenly real estate than she probably wanted, but God help me, it was so absolutely stunning the way that skin looked and felt beneath my lips, the way it seemed almost to glow in the faint light that shined into my bedroom from the living room where she'd been just minutes before.

That was just twelve weeks ago, and I'm laying here watching her sleep with a smile on my face, just as in awe of her as I was that first night—more even, if such a thing were possible.

She's sleeping on her back, the way she does in the morning after she's gotten up to go to the bathroom and come back to bed to snooze for another forty-five minutes or an hour, and she's pushed the sheets down and away so they cover only her legs because she gets so hot at night now. She's got one arm draped over the pillow forming a little arch over her head, and the other arm rests gently across her hip as her hand cups the bottom of the rounder, even more beautiful curve of her beautiful belly. I want to reach out and touch it, to kiss it with my lips to place my hand there on that round ivory curve so I can feel where our baby is growing, but I don't want to wake her.

So I just lay here, looking at that wonderfully soft, curvy belly of hers and think how much I love it, and how much I love her, and how much I love that baby of ours, and how that wonderful curve, the way it looks in the clear yellow light of a Saturday morning, seems to symbolize everything that's great about the life we have now.

"Mmmmm," she murmurs, arching her head back on her pillow before she turns her head and opens her eyes. She gives me a sleepy smile and squints at me, blinking as the morning sun hits her newly-awaken eyes. "Booth, have you been watching me sleep?" she asks, her voice raspy and deep.

I can't help but grin and I reach out, placing my hand on her round, beautiful, pregnant belly as I lean over and kiss her, gently capturing her bottom lip between mine before I pull away again. "I could watch you sleep all day," I say. "You look like an angel when you're sleeping."

"Mmmmpth," she mumbles, the sound somewhere between a laugh and a grumble. "A hungry angel," she says. That's how I know that she's either very sleepy, very hungry or both, because she doesn't fight me on describing her as some kind of supernatural being or whatnot.

I sit up a little and bend my head over to kiss her stomach. "You want me to fill that beautiful belly of yours, hmm?" I ask her. "What do you want for breakfast, baby?" I know I can get away with calling her 'baby' because she's not yet awake enough to protest.

She rubs the sleep from her eyes and purses her lips, her brow furrowing for couple of seconds as she thinks about it, then says, "A sesame bagel from Bagels Etc. in Dupont Circle. Lightly toasted, with reduced-fat cream cheese, tomato and capers."

I rub my palm over the round curve of her belly and kiss it again. "Anything for you," I say with a smile. "And anything for little baby Bones here."

I feel her reach out and curl her fingers around the nape of my neck as she pulls my face up to hers again. She looks at me for a second, her pale blue eyes heavy-lidded as she blinks a couple of times, then turns her head a little and kisses me, her tongue sliding across my lower lip as I lean into the kiss. I hear her moan softly as her lips grasp at mine and I feel a tingle of raw need crackle at the base of my spine when she deepens the kiss. My hand slides across her belly and over the edge of her hip, trying to encourage her to roll onto her side as my balls hitch in anticipation. She squirms against the sheets and resists me, then breaks off the kiss and scrunches up her nose as she flashes me a faux-serious look.

"First fill my belly," she says with a wicked grin that she's quickly learned will make me do almost anything she asks. "Then we can play."

"Mmmm," I murmur back, leaning in and pressing my lips against hers to steal one last wet, hungry little kiss before I sit up in bed. "Sesame bagel, lightly toasted, with light cream cheese and tomato."

"And capers," she adds quickly with a narrow-eyed smirk.

"Since when do you like capers?" I ask with a laugh as I swing my legs over the side of the bed.

"Don't tease the pregnant woman, Booth," she warns me. "Go get food. Then..." She arches an eyebrow and licks her lips suggestively. "Then you can tease me all you want."

I look over my shoulder at her and as I let my eyes skim over the curve of her pregnant belly, I know there's nothing I wouldn't do for her.

* * *

**A/N: ** _So there's another morsel to tide you over until tomorrow's episodes air. It wasn't much, but I hope you liked it anyway._

_Let me know what you thought of that. Share your thoughts, as I've shared mine. Please leave a review._

_Thanks for reading!_


	3. Knowing

**Age of Discovery**

* * *

**By:** dharmamonkey  
**Rated:** M  
**Disclaimer:** I don't own Bones. I am, however, interested in renting Booth. A five-hour minimum would apply.

* * *

**A/N:** _Well, I never promised that all of these would be in chronological order, but clearly my attempt to keep it that way didn't last long. This one picks up after the infamous Missing Scene in 6x22._

* * *

**Chapter 3: Knowing**

* * *

It was the look in her eyes that stayed with me that day, more than anything else.

I don't mean the look in her eyes when she looked up at me as I was holding her against my chest that morning. I felt her pain as my own as her tears soaked into my T-shirt with each sob that shuddered through her. A few minutes passed and her breaths finally settled into a normal rhythm, but I was still taken a bit by surprise when I felt her cheek move, sliding up the fabric of my shirt as she raised her eyes to meet mine. Something had shifted in her. I knew it by the look in her eyes—there was a clarity of purpose in those eyes that just minutes before had been red-rimmed and teary when she came in, shaken and broken-hearted, and sat on the edge of my bed. When she looked up at me, she blinked and took a short breath, then raised her eyebrows as if waiting for me to give her a sign. I opened my mouth a little to say something when I felt her fingers grab a fistful of my shirt as her lips brushed across mine.

And I don't mean the look I saw in her eyes a few minutes later when six and a half years of everything we'd shared between us collapsed into a single moment and the two of us finally became one, although that look—the way her beautiful, shimmery blue-green eyes suddenly widened as I sank myself into her, and the way her mouth, that lovely mouth of hers, fell open as she drew in a sharp breath when my hips came to rest against hers—will forever be burned into my memory as the moment time stood still for us and everything that mattered finally fell into place.

No, it was the look in her eyes as she left that my apartment at six-thirty that morning—_that _was the look that stayed with me all day.

I'd walked her to the door, pressing my hand gently against the small of her back because I didn't want to stop touching her after all that we'd shared—and the incredible way she'd shared herself with me just a couple of hours before. I opened the door and was holding it open for her when she suddenly stopped and turned around. She cocked her head to the side and gazed back at me, her eyes two big blue wells of emotion, so open and full of what I can only describe as gravity, almost as if she was pleading with me to understand all of the feelings that were pouring out of them without asking her to give a name to each of them.

In those eyes I recognized that feeling halfway between fear and resignation, the sort of grim expectation that the other shoe was about to drop and the happiness she'd been holding onto was about to slip through her fingers. As the son of an alcoholic father and a recovering compulsive gambler, I knew that feeling, and after knowing Bones for as long as I had, I felt my chest tighten as I recognized that she was afraid that what we had, what we'd finally attained between us that night, might be lost if Broadsky got the drop on me when I went out there to get him.

The memory of Vincent's blood pulsing over my fingers as it pooled on the floor underneath him was fresh in my mind and I understood her fear, because, in a sense, I felt the same way. I looked into her eyes, and I saw in the love, fear and determination in those beautiful blues all that I needed to go out and do what I had to do. Because it had to be me. I knew it—and she knew it, too. If I couldn't take Broadsky down, he was going to keep trying until he got me or Bones, and I couldn't let that happen. I don't take the taking of human life lightly, but I was going to stop him, and if that meant I had to lay him in the ground to do it, as God is my witness, that's what I was going to do.

I closed my eyes and swallowed, then opened them up again and stepped towards her, bringing my hand up to touch her jaw. I felt her lean into my hand as I stroked her silky cheek with my thumb. She pressed her lips together in a firm line and blinked those glimmering eyes at me, then nodded.

She knew.

She knew what I had to do—to go out there and take down Broadsky by whatever means necessary, that it had to be me, and that doing so meant putting myself into his line of fire. And I know it terrified her to think that I could get hurt or killed, even if she didn't say it. She didn't need to say it any more than I needed to tell her that I had no choice but to go out there that morning. We knew. Giving words to the things we knew didn't make them any more real, or any more right. They just were.

My heart burned with the knowledge of it—the knowledge of what I had to do, and all the reasons I had to do it, not the least of which was the woman standing before me who I loved with every fiber of my being. My mouth fell open in a sigh but I didn't say anything to her. There was so much I wanted to say to her, and yet none of it needed saying.

She knew.

I took a breath and smiled, hoping to coax a smile out of her serious face. I could see the hesitation in her eyes, but then saw something else in those eyes—a flicker of laughter a second before that smile curved her lips.

Then I kissed her. I felt her lips move against mine and I put everything I had into that kiss: all of the love I felt for her, all of the gratitude I felt for the love I knew she had for me, and a promise—not that I would stay safe, because she knew I couldn't promise that—that I would always love her, as I always had. I closed my eyes and allowed myself to drown in her kiss, moaning a little as I felt her fingers slide around the back of my neck to pull me in closer. Her tongue swept across my mouth one last time before she broke off the kiss. She brushed her hand over the side of my head, drawing her index finger along my temple to the edge of my jaw, then took a step back. We just looked at each other for a few second, then she closed her beautiful eyes, nodded once and turned away. I opened my mouth to stifle the tears that welled in my eyes as I watched her disappear down the stairs.

She knew. God help me, she knew.

And just knowing that she finally knew my love for her was like a talisman, a lucky charm I held close to my heart as I followed Broadsky through the maze of shipping containers that day. I swore to God and all the saints that morning that if I made it through the day, not another day would go by that I wouldn't make sure she knew how much I loved her.

Every morning and every night I make sure she knows. And even if she doesn't say the words as often as I do, every day bears witness to the fact that she loves me.

That I know.

* * *

**A/N: ** _Yes, another short ditty for your reading pleasure. Very short, in this case. Still, I hope you liked it anyway._

_Let me know what you thought of that. Share your thoughts, as I've shared mine. Please leave a review._

_Thanks for reading!_


	4. The Biggest Surprise

**Age of Discovery**

* * *

**By:** dharmamonkey  
**Rated:** M  
**Disclaimer:** I don't own Bones. I am, however, interested in renting Booth. A five-hour minimum would apply.

* * *

**A/N:** _This isn't the one I thought I'd be posting as Chapter 4, but it came to me while driving (a lot of my ideas occur to me while driving, for some reason). So here it is. Enjoy!_

* * *

**Chapter 4: The Biggest Surprise**

* * *

I know Booth better and more intimately than I have ever known any other human being. That has been the case for a very long time, since long before we actually became intimate in the sexual sense.

But now that we _are _sexually intimate, engaged in a committed, monogamous long-term relationship and, for all intents and purposes, cohabiting (even though we don't actually spend all of our time at one or the other person's domicile), I know all sorts of things about him physically and sexually. I know that he is uncircumcised—something which surprised me, given the fact that he grew up in the United States and was born in a hospital where circumcision would have been performed on all newborn male infants as a matter of standard practice unless the parents objected to it—and that, while he enjoys the male superior position during intercourse, he loves it when I assume control and get on top. I know that he likes having sex in the shower, something that I myself had never particularly cared for in previous relationships but which I have come to enjoy. And I know that nothing gets him hard more quickly than when I kiss the edge of his armpit and let the very tip of my tongue skim over the skin covering his well-developed anterior deltoid muscle.

I know that he is ticklish, and that stroking my index finger along the base of his spine, right along the waistband of his boxer shorts, will cause him to flinch and roll his shoulders back. I know that he prefers wearing boxer shorts with his suits, but boxer briefs with his denim jeans and that he won't wear any underwear at all when he runs out on Saturday mornings to pick up coffee and bagels at Dunkin Donuts.

I know that he prefers to sleep on the right side of the bed (that is, on the side that is to one's right when one stands at the foot of the bed looking at the headboard), and that he has to sleep with something over him, even if it's just a sheet, because he can't fall asleep unless he's snuggled under covers of some kind—and that this little predilection of his makes him prone to hoarding all of the covers and leaving my bare skin exposed to the air at night.

I know that he will only set his alarm to go off with the radio setting as opposed to the buzzer, something that I found out inadvertently a couple of nights after the first time we made love when I switched the alarm clock to the buzzer setting, and he awoke startled, panting and wide-eyed when the buzzer went off at a quarter after six. Puzzled by his rather extreme response to what I considered an ordinary sound, I found out that the alarm's buzzer reminded him of the electric shock torture he underwent during the four days he spent as a POW during the first Gulf War. Since then, we keep the alarm clocks set to WBIG 100.3 FM, a classic rock radio station that is Booth's favorite among all of the radio stations in D.C.

I know that he takes his showers in the morning, whereas I take mine at night, an hour or so before I retire to bed. He prefers to use bar soap instead of liquid body wash, and he buys only Irish Spring Icy Blast soap for use in the shower because he thinks it smells better than the regular Irish Spring fragrance. (I've found that Booth is very particular about things when it comes to personal grooming products, which amuses me.) He sings in the shower—or, rather, he hums in the shower and murmurs the words to songs, most commonly the song "Oh Sherrie" by the singer Steve Perry. Although he would deny it, he doesn't actually have all of the lyrics devoted to memory, because he'll suddenly stop his murmur-singing to hum a few bars of the song before resuming singing the song's rather repetitive chorus:

_Oh Sherrie, our love_  
_Holds on, holds on _  
_Oh Sherrie, our love _  
_Holds on, holds on_

I know that he likes to sidle up behind me while I'm getting ready for work, grasp me by the hips and lean over to kiss the back of my neck. He loves kissing me, not just on the lips, but also by placing soft yet increasingly sucking kisses along the curve where my neck and shoulders meet. Once he starts kissing me like that, it's usually a matter of only thirty seconds or so before he'll press his hips against my buttocks and I am able to feel the thick, firm bulk of his erection underneath his boxers, and that he does this sometimes even if he knows that we do not have time for intercourse, because he derives a particular satisfaction from creating sexual tension knowing that we will have to endure an entire long day of work before we can come home and release that tension in a desperate, wordless encounter that usually involves him taking me standing up against the wall in the living room, against the refrigerator, or—sometimes—against the back of the front door.

I learned many things that surprised me in the weeks and months after we began sleeping together and cohabiting. But one thing more than any other came as a complete and utter surprise...

I love finding out things about him, learning about what he likes and what he does not, what turns him on and what (in his words) kills the mood, what kind of half and half he buys to put in his coffee (he drinks his coffee at home and at the diner with half and half, while he drinks it black at the Hoover because he loathes the powdered creamer in the Hoover breakrooms), and the multitude of other tiny minutiae that make up who he is.

The fact that I actually revel in uncovering these truths about him, and that I find all of them, for lack of a better term, endearing—_this_ has proven to be the biggest surprise of them all.

* * *

A/N: _So, yes, another tiny little bit of fill-in to flesh out the sorts of things we didn't get in that mysterious black hole between the end of 6x23 and the opening moments of 7x1._

_I know, it wasn't much, but I hope you liked it anyway. __Let me know what you thought of that. Share your thoughts, as I've shared mine. Encourage me to keep burping out these little ditties. __Leave a review._

_Thanks for reading!_


	5. Damaged

**Age of Discovery**

* * *

**By:** dharmamonkey  
**Rated:** M  
**Disclaimer:** I don't own Bones. I am, however, interested in renting Booth. A five-hour minimum would apply.

* * *

**A/N:** _This one was written on an airplane and in an airport gate area. It's short, but hopefully you like it anyway. _

* * *

**Chapter 5: Damaged**

* * *

I always felt damaged.

That's the best way I can put it. It's hard to explain, but...

Sometimes I look at this woman, this amazing, brilliant, gorgeous, big-hearted, wonderful woman and all I can think is how crazy it is that a woman like her would want to be with a guy like me.

It doesn't make any sense that a woman like her would want a guy who has to fight every day to keep away his itchy fingers from the billiards table or the office NCAA tournament pool, or a whose anger sits inside of him at a low simmer and who has to battle to keep it from boiling over. More than once I've lost everything I had because I couldn't keep myself in check, and she knows it.

But she still wants me. Damaged, wounded, battered and broken as I am—she knows how I am, but she loves me anyway.

She loves me.

She loves me, and I love her. I love her with everything I have and everything I am, and I love that baby of ours we made in love.

Sometimes it seems like a dream, and I can't believe how lucky I am that, despite it all, she loves me, but then she amazes me with her big heart and the love she gives me every single day, and I know. I know it's real.

When I come home after spending a long day on my feet and every step I take cuts through me like a lance, she knows it with a single glance and her beautiful blue-gray eyes sparkle with sympathy. I collapse on the sofa, stretching my aching legs out, and she sits down next to me, taking my broken feet into her hands, stroking her slender, loving fingers over my fallen arches and soothing them. She rubs her thumbs over the joints at the base of my toes and slowly works the tension out of my tightly-strung muscles and ligaments. I feel her tracing her fingertips over the faint scars left on the soles by my torturers, acknowledging each of my wounds with a gentle touch.

When we make love, she kisses the scars carved into my skin by bullets, shrapnel and a dozen other experiences that cut and branded me over the years. She doesn't pull away or hesitate when she sees the marks on my skin. She gives them extra attention, letting her sweet, soft lips linger longer on those places than anywhere else.

I hear her murmur a little in her sleep, moving her hand so it covers mine which rests on the gorgeous round of her pregnant belly, and I feel a warm, tingly feeling spread through my chest. I slide over, curling my body around her backside as I lean over and kiss the edge of her shoulder and I think of how far we've come, her and me.

She told me once, "I don't have your kind of open heart."

But she was wrong. Every day she opens her heart to me, embracing me despite it all—despite the wounds and the scars and the damage—and I can feel my own heart healing under the warm balm of her love. Every day she loves me with that open heart of hers, she makes me a better man, and it makes me love her even more than I already do.

I kiss her shoulder again, smiling at the way she wiggles her bottom against my crotch when I do.

God, I love this woman.

* * *

A/N: _This one really was a drabble._

_I know, it wasn't much, but I hope you liked it anyway. __Let me know what you thought of that. Share your thoughts, as I've shared mine. Encourage me to keep burping out these little ditties. __Leave a review._

_Thanks!_


	6. One Plus One Equals One

**Age of Discovery**

* * *

**By:** dharmamonkey  
**Rated:** M  
**Disclaimer:** I don't own Bones. I am, however, interested in renting Booth. A five-hour minimum would apply.

* * *

**Chapter 6: One Plus One Equals One**

* * *

Perhaps it's ludicrous, because over the last couple of months, I must have watched him do this dozens of times. But that morning, for whatever reason, something about it hit me particularly hard.

I could hear his singing through the tinkling of the shower water. His baritone voice was low and round as the words of the song resonated in his throat and I noted the familiar _fwwip _sound of shaving gel being extruded from the can. His rich voice wafted into the shower stall with each word he sang as he rubbed the aqua-colored gel into his two day-old beard:

_I hear the train a comin'_  
_It's rollin' 'round the bend,_  
_And I ain't seen the sunshine,_  
_Since, I don't know when.  
____I'm stuck in Folsom Prison,  
____And time keeps draggin' on,  
____But that train keeps a-rollin',  
____On down to San Antone._

Booth has a gift for remembering song lyrics. I have an outstanding memory, but for some reason, while I can remember the actual words to songs, I can't seem to recall how they string together in lines, phrases and verses, so I find myself unable to capably sing along with a song even if I know the words. Booth, on the other hand, has a generally average memory, but there are some things—song lyrics and sports statistics—that he seems to recall with particular ease. He can literally sing along with thousands of songs, his recollection of the words being triggered as soon as he hears the first few lines or even a few measures of the song's musical accompaniment. It's something that amazes me every time he does it, and which I will admit that makes me a bit envious that his mind can do that. So I stood there under the shower stream, rinsing the conditioner out of my hair as I listened to him sing.

_When I was just a baby,  
My mama told me, "Son,  
Always be a good boy,  
Don't ever play with guns."  
But I shot a man in Reno,  
Just to watch him die.  
When I hear that whistle blowin',  
I hang my head and cry._

I cut off the water and stood there in the strange silence of the shower stall, wringing the water out of my hair before I stepped out.

Booth stood there at the sink, his chin raised as he pulled the skin of his throat taut and drew the razor along the underside of his jaw, easing up on the blade just above where his laryngeal prominence begins. He tapped the razor on the edge of the sink, splattering tiny dark hairs on the porcelain before turning on the faucet and swiping the blade under the water for a moment. I could see his eyes in the mirror and observed him glancing over at me, our eyes meeting briefly in the reflection before he winked, bit back a faint smirk and resumed his shaving. I stood there for a few seconds, dripping on the bathmat, then caught myself and reached for the fluffy towel, wrapping it around my torso as I continued to watch Booth, who was wearing only a pair of dark gray jersey-knit boxer briefs, stroke the razor over the last stubbly patch of skin on the side of his neck.

I took a deep breath as I leaned over and twisted my hair in a small microfiber towel, soaking up the excess water while my nostrils tingled as I inhaled the menthol scent of Booth's shaving cream. Standing up straight again, I let my hair flip back against my neck as I held the plush terry bath sheet against my chest with one arm and walked behind him, dragging my fingertips across the small of his back, along the waistband of his boxer briefs. I rolled my lips together to suppress a smile at seeing once again how a simple touch affected him as Booth sucked in a breath and set his razor on the counter with a sharp_ clack. _He raised his chin and turned his head, running his hand over the edge of his jaw to check that he hadn't missed any spots, then made a low sound in his throat as he reached for a hand towel to wipe a few errant wisps of shaving foam off his jaw and temple.

He made another sound that fell along the continuum between a grunt and a chuckle, dropping the towel on the edge of the sink as he looked back up into the mirror. Sidling up behind him and brushing my belly up against his ass, I leaned forward and kissed his back, rubbing my lips over the plane of skin between his shoulder blades which was still dotted with droplets of water from his shower a few minutes before. I felt him roll his shoulders back and nod his head at the ticklish sensation, then reach around with his right hand to fist the towel I'd wrapped around myself. Kissing him again, I felt him grab more of the fabric, tugging at it until, after a second or two, I gave in and let him pull the towel to the floor as our eyes met once more in the mirror's reflection.

A smile cracked his smooth, clean-shaven face and he stood there but did not turn around. I felt a _whoosh _as the towel fell away and my bare skin was left exposed to the cool air along the boundary between the bathroom and my bedroom. Seeking the comforting warmth of Booth's skin, I pressed my bare breasts against his back, reaching around with both arms and encircling his flat, firm belly, letting my hands rest on each side of his navel as I felt the muscles beneath my fingertips tense at the contact.

"Bones," he murmured, his voice deep and soft, the sibilant sound at the end followed by a low rattle sounding from his throat as I stroked my fingers over his skin and let them slip under the waistband of his underwear. I felt his hips rock forward as his head tipped back with a rumbling sigh and I knew, even before his abdominal muscles jerked again, that I was getting to him. "Baby, I—"

"Booth," I pleaded, pulling his hips back so his clothed bottom pressed against my pubis and the lower curve of my increasingly round belly. My body had been thrumming with want as soon as I opened my eyes that morning, but the hum of my arousal had begun to throb even more intensely after I cut off the shower and opened the shower door, letting the fragrance of his shaving gel rush into the steam-filled shower cubicle. Hearing the need in my voice, he peeled my hands away from his belly and turned around, his hands falling on my hips as soon as he was facing me. I felt my skin flush hot the second his big hands closed around the flesh of my hips, and I heard myself sigh.

Booth's hands squeezed my hips and quickly migrated upward, sliding along the side of my growing belly and to my breasts, which were larger and hung a little lower than they had before. He took my breasts in his hands and cupped them, drawing his calloused thumbs across the points of my nipples knowing that doing so would make me gasp. My pregnancy had increased blood flow throughout my body, and the most sensitive parts of my body were now even more sensitive. A month into my second trimester, my body seemed to be constantly in a state of semi-arousal, and the sight of him standing there—clad only in a snug pair of jersey-knit boxer briefs, his olive skin warm and damp, his flat male nipples taut as the air in the bathroom cooled and the steam in the air condensed on our skin, his warm brown eyes darkening to molten pitch as they skimmed over my body's changing curves, his face smooth and perfectly kissable—made the humming need between my legs throb to the point it was almost painful. Booth leaned in close, his forehead touching mine and his warm breath tickling my nose as I breathed in the smell of him with his menthol shaving cream and cinnamon mouthwash. He pulled his head away, his dark eyes narrowing and his mouth opening as if he was going to say something, but after seeing the need in my eyes and the flushness of my skin, he gave his head a slight sideways jerk and clasped my hands in his, then tugged me in the direction of my bed.

I lay back on my bed and felt the sheets and covers in disarray beneath me but as I watched him fall into his hands, arching his body over mine as he stood at the edge of the bed, I didn't care. The only thing I cared about was how my body thrummed for him, and the only thing I wanted was to feel him stroking into me, because in that moment, the only thing that could ease the ache inside of me was to feel him fill me up, to feel his bony hips rock against mine as his hard, thick cock seared me with each of his slow, rolling thrusts. My body was ready for him, wet and wanting as it had been since the alarm had gone off a half hour earlier, and I knew he was ready, too—I'd felt his erection pressing against the underside of my belly through the thin fabric of his boxer briefs while we were standing in the bathroom facing each other. I felt him, silky and hard and thick and hot, swipe once along the length of me and I sighed, a shiver passing up my spine as he finally sank into me, his lips parting and the muscles of his abdomen tightening as a long, dark groan rumbled from his throat.

He drew his hips back and slid out of me, then arched his head back and clenched his eyes shut, rocking forward again and sinking into me again. I watched his facial muscles slacken and as he let all of the sensations of being inside of me wash over him, and in seeing him let go of everything except for the experience of being with me, I allowed myself to do the same, to open my mouth and let the sounds of my own pleasure fall from my lips as I felt every nerve ending in my body crackle with a flash of ecstasy. He surged into me, again and again and again, pushing and stretching and sliding and rising up into me, our breaths quickening each time he pressed into me to the point where it seemed that our bodies moved and breathed and thrummed synchronously, as if there was no longer a _me _and a _him. _That morning, in that moment, there was only _us._

That's when I knew he'd been right all along.

_"But making love,"_ he'd said to me years ago. _"Making love_..._that's when two people become one."_

Our bodies and our hearts became one each time we made love, just as they had the very first night we came together in his bed in the small hours of the morning after we lost Vincent. But as each day passed over the weeks and months since that first night together, something else had happened. The lives we had been leading, which had always overlapped and become increasingly intertwined, suddenly ceased to exist. There was no longer _my _life or _his _life.

There was only _our _life, and the life we'd created together from the love we made. That was all, and though I would never have imagined it would be this way, it turned out that that was everything I'd ever wanted.

* * *

**A/N:** _By now, you may have discerned the theme of this little series. Vasco de Gama, Ferdinand Magellan and__ António de Abreu* _have nothing on Booth and Brennan. Like the historical Age of Discovery, their explorations are incremental in nature, each journey pressing a little farther than the one before, making their world a little broader with each risk they take.

_I know, this little chapter may not have seemed like much, but I hope you liked it anyway. __Let me know what you thought of that. Share your thoughts, as I've shared mine. Encourage me to keep burping out these little ditties. __Leave a review. _

_Thanks for reading..._

*****_António de Abreu was the Portuguese explorer who discovered the Maluku Islands in 1512._


	7. Mulam Nes

**Age of Discovery**

* * *

**By:** dharmamonkey  
**Rated:** M  
**Disclaimer:** I don't own Bones. I am, however, interested in renting Booth. A five-hour minimum would apply.

* * *

**Chapter 7: _Mulam Nes_**

* * *

_"Mulam nes_."

It was one of the first phrases in Pashto I learned after I got to Afghanistan and started working with the company of Afghan National Army troops I was assigned to train.

The U.S. Army gave me a crash course in Pashto before I left Fort Bragg for Bagram, so I had a handle on the basics—"hello" (_salaam_), "what is your name?" (_staa num tsa dhe?_), "where are you from?" (_ta da kom zaee ye?_), "do you understand?" (_ta poheegee?_) and so on—but the first phrase I learned from the ANAs I was working with was "_Mulam nes._" The phrase translates to something like "It's uncertain." My ANA guys muttered those words all the damn time. If I would ask one of them whether a particular village was friendly to the Taliban, they'd tell me, _"Mulam nes_." Or if I inquired if we would be able to make it from point A to point B by sundown, they'd say, _"Mulam nes_." I can't begin to tell you how many times I asked a question and was told, _"Mulam nes_." It got to the point that it was almost comical, except that when you're in a foreign country surrounded by people who speak a different language, a significant percentage of whom want to kill you, that kind of vagueness is a little disconcerting.

I've always thought of myself as a laid-back kind of guy, even though Bones says that I'm a control freak. Sure, I mean, I like to be in charge—it's been a while since I was a lowly one-chevron Army private or a bullpen-dwelling FBI rookie—but I don't think that's the same as being a control freak. It's not as if I want to control everything. I just want to control the controllables, if you know what I mean. I've always tried to accept that there's shit you can't control, and things you can't define or pin down. That kind of thing is harder for Bones than I think it is for me. She's not really a natural fit for _"Mulam nes" _type situations.

Or at least, I never thought she was. But just like she always has, Bones surprises me.

We'd barely been together six weeks when we found out Bones was pregnant. The night she told me ("I'm pregnant—you're the father"), I felt an incredible swirl of emotions hit me all at once, like a tidal wave. I was so happy at the idea that this woman, who I loved with everything I had and everything I was, was pregnant with a baby we'd created from our love, but I was surprised, in shock actually, at the suddenness of it. We'd spoken one night after making love, a couple of weeks after Vincent died, about the possibility of having a baby together, but we'd agreed that we had a lot of time to think about that, but that for now we'd just enjoy being an _us. _She'd been on the Pill which is why we didn't use any protection, but what we didn't realize until later was that, amid the craziness and the trauma after Vincent was killed, she'd missed a couple of pills, and that even though she'd followed the instructions about making up for the missed pills, it was too late. The night she told me she was pregnant, I was a little concerned that she'd freak out, not because she didn't want to have a baby, or because she didn't want to have a baby with me—because I knew she did on both counts—but because it came all of a sudden, and not in a way that either of us had planned. Bones is generally not one who enjoys surprises or uncertainty. (How did Cam put it to me once? _"Dr. Brennan doesn't make life decisions without a Boolean flow chart."_)

So it was _she _who surprised _me _when she didn't completely freak out. It seemed that losing Vincent changed her, in the sense that before that, Bones took a great deal of comfort in organizing the chaos of life, and believed that, in fact, she could actually organize her life in an 'optimal' way. Of course, I of all people understood why she'd want to do that: growing up in an abusive home with an alcoholic father, I never knew when I came home from school which Dad was going to walk in the door that night—the raging drunk with bloodshot eyes who was going to call me a lazy motherfucking piece of shit and slam my face into the pantry door, or the mellow, good-natured barber who made terrific ziti and threw a perfect pitch for backyard batting practice. Having my spotter shot right next to me in Iraq in '91 and die in my arms taught me that there was some shit in life I just couldn't control or, hell, even predict. So I learned early on to roll with the punches a bit and accept that the best I could do most times was steer things a little, as opposed to trying to actually control them. Bones came away from the chaos of her own fucked up childhood hellbent to control, plan and organize her life down to the smallest daily details, and for years, she'd gotten by that way.

But I think losing Vincent finally proved to her what I'd long ago accepted, that life itself is fragile and can change or shatter in an instant, and that the best we can do is go with the flow, riding the current and keeping the bow of the canoe pointing downstream and paddling every now and then to keep away from the rocks.

Bones doesn't believe in fate, obviously, and, of course, I do. Although I think that Bones and I would have gotten together anyway (I mean, I did write that date—_"One year from today, we meet at the Reflecting Pool on the Mall—_on the little slip of paper I burned with her), I don't think it's coincidence that we got together when we did. We had to wait until I wasn't angry anymore, and for her to let go of the last of her imperviousness. I think that last little measure of her imperviousness to give way was not a wearing down but rather a kind of letting go—letting go of the idea that life can be predicted, controlled, organized and planned. That night, when she came into my bedroom and sat on the edge of my bed, it was as if she felt her fingers pulling away from the idea of being able to have a master plan for her life. I held her in my arms and she wept, and I could feel her body shake as she sobbed. But then she stopped crying and looked up at me, and I have to think that the thing that had shifted inside of her was a new-found willingness to venture into the unknown, to step off into an uncertain future without having a plan or control or even a way of organizing her thinking about it.

That night—knowing that I was going to go out there the next morning to find Broadsky and that there was a chance, however small, that I might not make it back that night—the two of us knew only one thing about the future that lay ahead of us:

_Mulam nes._

It is uncertain.

But in that moment, and in all the beautiful moments that have filled the months we've been together since then, we were willing to face that uncertain future together, to love each other and make the most of whatever it was that lay ahead of us, for however long we'd have it.

The future may be uncertain, but I know that there's no one I'd rather face that uncertainty with than the amazing, beautiful, big-hearted woman I love. Knowing that she loves me back makes that uncertainty all that easier to bear.

* * *

**A/N: **_This may be a Bones fanfic first—a chapter or story title in Pashto. Okay, so maybe that's only cool to me._

_I know it was a short one, but I hope you all still enjoyed that anyway. Share your thoughts, as I've shared mine. Encourage me to keep burping out these little ditties. Leave a review._

_In any event, thanks for reading..._

**Editorial note: **_The term "mulam nes" really is a Pashto phrase meaning "It is uncertain." The phrase was used in a New York Times Magazine article, "Which Way Did The Taliban Go?" that was published on Sunday, January 20, 2013. I recommend the article to anyone curious about the current state of the war in Afghanistan and the handover of the war effort to the Afghan National Army.__  
_


	8. The Calendar

**Age of Discovery**

* * *

**By:** dharmamonkey  
**Series Rating:** M  
**Chapter rating:** T  
**Disclaimer**: I don't own Bones. I am, however, interested in renting Booth. A five-hour minimum would apply.

* * *

**Chapter 8: The Calendar**

* * *

One of the things I discovered after Booth and I began to be together is that, no matter how much time you spend with someone, there are things you don't learn about them until you wake up with them every morning and fall asleep next to them every night.

Of course, there have been many, many things I've learned about Booth in the five months since we first made love and formally embarked on being a couple. I know many things about him sexually and physically, of course, and I've become acquainted with his personal habits and preferences in way I never had an inkling of before. But some of the things that have surprised me most are discovering categories of things about him that I never even knew existed.

For example, Booth has what I can only describe (for lack of a better term) as a psychic calendar. I knew that Booth commemorates the anniversary of his Army comrade Teddy Parker's death by visiting his grave at Arlington, but what I didn't realize until after we began spending every night together was how many of such anniversaries Booth observes during the course of the year.

Two weeks after the night I told Booth I was pregnant, we agreed to meet at the Founding Fathers before heading back to his apartment for the night. We'd finished a case that afternoon, but he'd had to go back to the Hoover for one of Andrew Hacker's staff meetings which Andrew had inexplicably scheduled at 4:30 on a Thursday afternoon, so we decided I'd start on my part of the end-of-case paperwork back at the lab and we'd meet at the Founding Fathers for a drink. Unfortunately, I found myself detained at the lab by a graduate student intern who asked me to provide feedback on a journal article she'd written but who then got defensive when I provided the very feedback she'd solicited me to furnish. Suffice it to say, the appointment ran overlong, and by the time I arrived at the Founding Fathers, Booth had been there for forty-five minutes or so.

I knew the second I walked in and saw him sitting at his usual seat at the corner of the bar that something was wrong. In a way it's strange, but whether it's because I have spent a great deal of time around Booth to the point that I have learned to read the physical cues that denote his emotional states, or because Booth is particularly transparent in the way he evidences his emotions (Angela says that Booth "wears his heart on his sleeve" but I don't really care for that metaphor), I have come to recognize when he is in a melancholic mood. I saw him sitting there in his usual seat at the corner of the bar with a glass of whiskey in front of him, his jaw tensing and relaxing slightly before tensing again, almost as if he were masticating—physically chewing—even though I knew that it was more likely that he was metaphorically chewing on something, grinding his teeth as his mind ruminated on an idea or problem.

I noted from halfway across the bar that the glass of liquor in front of him was a generously-poured double, and as I came up behind him, the bartender cleared away an empty glass from the rear edge of the bar an arms-length away from Booth's seat and I knew that Booth had in fact been sitting there, drinking alone and brooding, for quite some time before I arrived.

"Hey," he said as he set his glass down on the bar and looked at me with a sad, almost forced smile. His voice sounded low and a little ragged, and I sensed it the change in his speech was not just from the effects of the whiskey he'd been drinking.

"Hey," I replied, brushing my hand across his forearm as I took my seat next to him. The bartender, Lou, regarded me with a quick nod and confirmed by a flash of his eyebrows that I was going to forgo my usual glass of Kidnapper Cliffs Hawkes Bay Malbec and instead get my now-usual club soda. I heard Booth breathe a heavy sigh as I turned in my seat to face him. "Is everything alright?" I asked him.

Booth shrugged noncommittally and sighed again, then pushed the glass of whiskey to the side. "Just had kind of a rough afternoon," he said, tapping the edge of his thumb on the well-burnished wood of the bar as his eyes finally swiveled to meet mine.

"Andrew's staff meeting?" I asked, knowing that he wouldn't have sunk into mood this dark solely on account of an Assistant Director's staff meeting but unsure at that point how to ask him directly what was wrong.

"Nuh-uh, no," he grunted, shaking his head a little as his left index finger rimmed the edge of the half-empty glass of whiskey.

For several long moments he just sat there and stared at that glass, and I could almost feel the heaviness about him. I didn't know what to say to him to get him to open up, so I simply reached over and clasped his hand in mine, curling my fingers around his broad palm as I stroked my thumb over the web of veins that criss-crossed the top of his hand. He looked down at my hand holding his, and after a few seconds, he squeezed my hand and took a deep breath.

"It's May 29th," he said quietly, squeezing my hand again as if to punctuate his statement. He raised his chin and drew a long breath, then turned and looked at me. His warm brown eyes shimmered in the light of the bar, and I knew just by the way he gazed back at me that there was some sort of significance to that date. I felt bad, in a way, because while I recognized that the date was meaningful to him, I couldn't discern what that meaning was.

"Yes," I whispered, acknowledging Lou with a faint nod as he set a pint glass of club soda on the bar in front of me. I opened my mouth to say more, but as per usual, Booth himself saved me from my own clear inability to steer a conversation of emotional gravity.

"Twelve years ago," he said, pulling his whiskey glass towards him but leaving it resting on the bar. "Me and Hank—you know, Hank Luttrell—were in Kosovo together, and uhh..." He hesitated, reaching up and scratching the back of his head as he seemed to tarry while gathering his chaotic thoughts into some semblance of order.

"We went in, a combat jump, on the 27th of May, me and him and a company-sized element of Rangers, into the mountain areas along the Yugoslav/Macedonian border to meet up with a couple of Norwegian special forces units—_Forsvarets Spesialkommando _and _Hærens Jegerkommando _teams. We were supposed to coordinate with the Kosovar Albanian groups, recon the area and take out some strategic targets—high-ranking guys in the Serb military—to weaken Milošević's leadership and put pressure on him to accept the terms of the international peace plan, right?"

He fell silent for a minute, rubbing his temple and forehead with his left hand as he again squeezed my hand, more gently and more quickly that time, as he held fast his grip on my hand. He looked up at the ceiling for a few moments, then back down at our clasped hands before he continued.

"The 29th was a Saturday," he said. "I remember because the NHL Conference Finals had started that week and I was kind of bummed that I was gonna miss 'em." He chuckled at that and I smiled because I knew already by then how devoted he was to watching the hockey playoffs on TV, which was no small part of the reason we'd been spending so much time at his apartment—because he had a bigger TV than I did and subscribed to some kind of specialty cable package that ensured he didn't miss a single game.

"We had a mission," he explained, his voice suddenly sobering again. He fell into another long pause, but I wasn't sure whether it was because he was caught up in a memory or an emotion, or because he was waiting for some kind of prompt or nudge from me.

I nibbled the inside of my lip, then said, "Was this the mission that—?" Not certain what exactly it was that was bothering him, but knowing it had to do with what happened to his friend Hank Luttrell in Kosovo, I was leery of assuming, lest I make his dark mood even worse by my own clumsy misunderstanding. I breathed a sigh of relief when Booth nodded and began to speak again.

"We were part of a six-man hunter/killer team sent to get this guy, Ković, a Serb colonel who was in charge of ethnic cleansing in a particular sector of southern Kosovo." He winced at the memory of seeing the results of genocide, then swallowed hard, gritted his teeth for a second, then continued. "My spotter and I had taken the shot and gotten Ković, and we were heading back down the other side of the ridgeline to where the other four were waiting for us when we heard small arms fire." Again he paused, clearly caught up in the memory as his jaw tensed and shifted from one side to the other as I watched him try to control his quickening rate of respiration.

"Was Hank hit?" I asked, prompting him even though I knew the answer to the question. He closed his eyes and nodded.

I sat there next to him and felt his hand pull away from mine, and I felt a flash of uselessness. I was impotent—unable to help him because, while I've been in war zones and conflict areas, I myself have never been a soldier. What kind of words of wisdom could I offer him? What kind of advice could I give him? I had nothing to give him, nothing except what Angela told me years ago. _"I'm talking about being there for him,"_ she said. _"Knowing when a simple touch is enough."_ A simple touch and a willingness to listen—this was all I could offer him, and so I did.

I watched him reach for his whiskey, cupping the thick-walled glass between his palms, and I placed my hand on his forearm. I felt his olive skin, warm and smooth beneath my fingers, break out in goosebumps at my touch as the muscles of his arm tensed, then relaxed again. He let go of the glass and formed a fist as he opened up, the words coming slowly at first as he told me about finding his friend Hank, who was his lieutenant, laying on a bed of pine needles at the bottom of a ravine, his arms shaking as the blood soaked through his fatigues. Booth described feeling around his friend's lower back and finding no exit wound and realizing that there was a Serbian bullet lodged at the base of Hank's spine and that that was why he couldn't move his legs.

Booth's voice thickened and the words kept coming as he told me how the Serb patrol had surprised his Ranger cohorts and how it shouldn't have been that way had he only led his men better, because the Rangers were elite troops and the Serb soldiers were poorly-trained Yugoslav army regulars. His voice cracked as he told me how he carried Hank on his back for a kilometer over rugged terrain to the Macedonian border where a Norwegian army medic took Hank into his care. The trickle of words and memories became a gush as he told me how Hank spent month after month in rehabilitation at Walter Reed and how he would fly military transports on a standby basis from Fort Benning to Andrews Air Force Base once or twice a month to visit Hank, and how even now, he wakes up in a cold sweat some nights unable to shake the sensation of having his friend's blood on his fingers after running his hand up and down the clammy skin of Hank's back looking for the exit wound he knew wasn't there. I just listened and stroked my own hand over his forearm, tracing my thumb along a bulging vein as I felt the fine hairs prickle against my skin. I listened and touched him, knowing it wasn't much but that it was all, in that moment, that I could do.

Over the months since our separate lives have begun to merge into one, I have discovered that Booth's year is dotted with the anniversaries of many events that shaped him as a man, some of which scarred him deeply—February 25th (the day in 1991 when Teddy Parker was killed by an Iraqi sniper during a mission on the second day of the Coalition ground campaign during the Gulf War), February 27th (the day Booth was captured by the Iraqi Republican Guard and became a POW), March 1st (the day he was rescued from captivity by troops from the First Armored Division), August 14th (the day in 2010 when he watched a fellow Special Forces soldier blown apart by an IED while approaching a house that Booth had directed him to reconnoiter during a mission), October 3rd (the day in 1993 when Booth saw a fellow Ranger killed in an act of friendly fire during the Battle of Mogadishu)—and some of which, like his son Parker's birthday on November 5th or September 13th (the day he agreed to take me on as a partner), he regards more happily. When the veneer of Booth's cheerfulness wears thin and he snaps, his dark moods may seem to the uninformed observer to be completely unpredictable, but they often adhere to a predictable calendar.

I can only hope that as time goes on, I learn to be a better partner—in the romantic, non-professional sense—to him so that his annual observances of these anniversaries can be made more meaningful and less damaging, even if I can't make all of them happy or even pleasant.

I know that can't always make it better. I know that.

I just want to be there for him and to somehow make those darker memories on his psychic calendar a little easier to endure as the years wear on.

* * *

**A/N:** _Yes, the angsty soldier!Booth muse spoke to me again, and this is what he delivered. (The soldier!Booth bit of my muse is definitely male. As for the rest of it, I can't say for sure.) I know it was short, but I hope you liked it anyway._

_But don't leave me in the dark. Let me know you're out there reading these little ditties, and let me know what you think of them. Share your thoughts as I've shared mine. Is there a line, a word, a moment, a part of the scene that moved you in any particular way? Let me know. Leave a review. Show my muse some love & I'll see if I can keep her (him?) cranking._

_Don't be shy. I don't bite. Well, not in any way that'll hurt._

_Thanks for reading!_


	9. Need

**Age of Discovery**

* * *

**By:** dharmamonkey  
**Story Rating:** M  
**Chapter Rating: **T  
**Disclaimer:** I don't own Bones. I am, however, interested in renting Booth. A five-hour minimum would apply.

* * *

**Chapter 9: ****Need**

* * *

It was only four days.

Three days and four nights, actually, but those three days and four nights seemed like an eternity.

I hated everything about those three days. I hated waking up in a big king-sized bed on those slick, satiny high thread-count sheets she likes so much and feeling how cold the sheet felt when I rolled over and reached my hand out only to remember that I was sleeping alone again. I hated making coffee in the mornings and seeing how empty the twelve-cup carafe looked with only four cups' worth of coffee in it because there wasn't anyone else to share it with me. I hated seeing the plastic box of strawberries in the fridge get old and wrinkly because she wasn't there to eat them the way she did every morning with her oatmeal. I hated driving into work and listening to the morning DJs on the classic rock station banter back and forth because I'd gotten used to riding in with her and sharing our own banter on the way to dropping her off at the lab. I hated having to choose between grabbing a quick sandwich in the Hoover's cafeteria (where I'd be sure to get bombarded with "Hey, man, haven't seen you here in _ages_" or "Hey, Booth—so'd your bone-lady partner find a better lunch-buddy these days?") or going to the diner where I'd either have to eat alone or listen to Sweets babble on about something-or-other shit I didn't care about because all I could think of was Bones and how much I missed her.

The four nights weren't any better. In some ways, they were worse, because it was harder to distract myself from the fact that I was so goddamn miserable without her. I hated coming home to an empty apartment, sitting at the dining room table to eat dinner by myself, plopping down on the couch by myself to watch the game and not having her sitting there next to me with her little laptop tick-ticking away on the latest chapter of her new Kathy Reichs novel. I hated crawling under the sheets and needing to pull the comforter over me because the bed felt so damn cold without having her warm, soft, smooth bottom tucked snug against my crotch as I wrapped my arm around her waist and put my hand on her beautiful little belly that was getting rounder and more beautiful every day. I was cold and I was lonely and it was everything I could do to just stop thinking about how quiet the bedroom seemed all of a sudden without the sound of her sweet little snores or her precious little sleepy murmurs. Somehow I managed to fall asleep each night, but I was up before the alarm each morning because when I woke up around 4 a.m. the way I always do, I didn't have her warm, wonderful body to pull close to me so I could snuggle into her, kiss the back of her shoulder and fall asleep again for another couple of hours. The alarm would go off and the morning DJs would be bantering and I'd be reminded all over again how much I fucking missed her.

So when she called me the night before she was coming home, I was as giddy as a schoolboy.

"What time's your flight get in?" I asked her. "I'll pick you up at the airport."

There was a bit of static on the other end of the line as I swore I could hear the gears turning in that genius brain of hers.

"Booth," she said, her voice almost a groan as if my offer were ludicrous on its face. "My flight gets in at 10:55. By the time I deplane and retrieve my luggage at bag claim, it'll be nearly midnight. You don't need to do that."

I leaned my head back and sighed. "Bones," I said. "I know I don't _need _to pick you up. I _want _to pick you up."

She made a little sound, like a little puff of air in the back of her throat. "It's unnecessary, Booth," she said. "You'll be tired, and it's a half-hour drive from your apartment to Dulles, and it would be much easier if I simply took a taxi so that—"

"Come on, Bones," I pleaded. "It's been four days. I miss you so much I can't even think straight. I don't want to wait for you to come home. I don't want you to ride home in the back of a dirty old cab listening to Senegalese hip-hop while I'm sitting here at home nearly crawling out of my skin waiting to see you come through that door..."

I knew she'd fight me on it. She wouldn't be Bones if she didn't. "But Booth..."

"Nah-uh," I said. "Don't 'but Booth' me, alright? I'm picking you up. I'll be there right outside American Airlines baggage claim in a shiny black government-issue limousine ready to scoop you up and take you home."

I could almost hear her rolling her eyes at me on the other end of the line. "You're such an alpha male," she said with a laugh.

"And you love me for it," I snickered back.

"Mmmm," she murmured noncommittally. After a few seconds of static-filled pause, she added, "Maybe I do."

"Huh," I grunted. "So…"

"See you tomorrow, then, Booth…"

I closed my eyes and sighed as the line disconnected with a beep.

That next night, I was sitting in the cell phone waiting lot at Dulles playing Solitaire on my BlackBerry as the minutes ticked closer and closer to when her flight was supposed to land. I'd just moved the Queen of Spades off the deck and onto the spot where the King of Hearts was waiting when I saw her text message flash across the screen. _Deplaning now, _she said. I couldn't help but smile. A normal person would've said something like, _Just got off the plane, _but not my Bones. I finished that game of Solitaire so she'd have a few minutes to make her way from the gate to baggage claim. I was driving up to the passenger pickup area when I saw her walk out of the sliding glass doors, and I put my foot on the brake as I felt a wave of butterflies in my stomach.

She looked wonderful—beautiful in that natural, unassuming way that takes my breath away every time. I just sat there for a minute as I watched her bring her rolling bag to a stop and look up and down the sidewalk for my truck. She wore her off-white trench coat, a pair of dark jeans and a stylish black maternity top that hugged her chest perfectly and fell loosely over her four-months pregnant belly, and she had her hair pulled back in the casual, messy ponytail that I loved so much. My BlackBerry buzzed and I held it up to read the message—_Baggage retrieved, standing outside in front of door #4—_then eased my foot off the brake and idled up alongside the sidewalk in front of her. I rolled down the front passenger window and grinned.

"Need a ride?"

She cocked her head to the side and rolled her eyes in feigned annoyance, but she couldn't hold back a smile for more than a couple of seconds. I climbed out and walked around to the curb and reached for her, placing my hand on her hip and pulling her towards me as our lips met in a quick kiss. I breathed in the smell of her—a hint of sweat that clung to her hair at the nape of her neck along with a hint of her almost-faded perfume and the coconut-ginger scent of her shampoo—and felt a tingle at the base of my spine. I drew the tip of my tongue between her lips, urging her to deepen our kiss when a loud honk behind us startled us both, causing us to pull apart again. I laughed as I felt my heart had begun to pound in my chest, whether from excitement or desire or both, and I smiled at her, admiring the way her pale green eyes looked even brighter against the contrast of her flushed cheeks.

"Come on," I said, placing my hand on the small of her back as I opened the door for her.

I'd released the parking brake and was about to throw the Sequoia into drive when she leaned across the center console, reached her hand up and cupped my jaw with her slender fingers. I felt a warm flash of love and want as her fingernails scraped over my beard—I hadn't bothered to shave that morning—and I let go of the gearshift and leaned in, closing my eyes as I felt her soft, vanilla-scented lips brush across mine. I opened my mouth to her and my stomach did flip-flops as her tongue swept into my mouth and I heard—and felt—her moan into the kiss. My balls hitched as her sweet tongue glanced across mine and as I turned a little in my seat so I could face her, my hands flew up to hold her delicate, square jaw between my palms as I let myself drown in the joy of kissing her again after three painfully long days and four impossibly long nights.

I began to see stars as I ran out of air when someone rapped hard on the driver's side window. We parted again, each of gasping a little for air when I turned and saw a Washington Metropolitan Airports Authority cop standing there staring at us. His eyes swiveled over to the light rack along the front of my dash, then he gave us knowing smirk on his face and urged us to move along with a jerk of his chin.

Bones shot me a crooked grin and said, "We should really…"

"Yeah," I croaked. I winced and tried to ignore my growing hard-on as I pulled away from the curb.

The ride home was like a miniature version of her trip itself—mostly quiet, interminably long and a little tense, not in a bad way but in an 'oh my God, if I take my eyes off the road and look into her eyes, we're not going to make it home' kind of way—and we didn't say much to each other, although she did remind me of the only other time I picked her up at the airport, when I pulled a few strings with Homeland Security to get her held at customs so I could finally snag her after my umpteen-million emails, voice mails and phone messages were unceremoniously ignored.

We walked past the old elevator in my building and exchanged knowing looks as we remembered how that day we spent together in there was the beginning of everything for us, in a sense—the day we finally acknowledged that we wanted each other, and that we wanted to be together. Six months later, we were together—in love and sharing our lives, more or less living together even though we were alternating between nights at her apartment and nights at mine, each day finding our lives more and more intertwined as we found ourselves another day closer to bringing our baby into the world. I carried her bags for her as I followed her up the stairs, and as I watched her butt round the corner towards my apartment, I felt like the luckiest man in the world.

I stood behind her as she fumbled with her keyring, leaning over and placing a kiss on the spot of soft, sweaty skin right behind and below her ear, and when I heard her make that rumbly little sound in the back of her throat—a sexy little sigh that I'd never heard from her until we started sleeping together but which had become my second-favorite sound in the whole world, surpassed only by the breathy cry she made when she came apart—I knew she was as jazzed up and ready to go as I was. She opened the door and went in, and I nearly fell through the door as I dumped the bags just inside my foyer and kicked the door shut with my foot.

As soon as the door slammed shut behind me, she turned around and looked at me with an intense look in her eyes, which had shifted from their usual light gray-green color to a darker, bluer shade that I'd months ago recognized as the sign that she was turned on. I felt a twitchiness in my muscles and a tugging sensation low in my belly, but while a part of me wanted to grab her and take her right there against the door, another part of me wanted to see what she would do—to see what she wanted, or needed—and so I just stood there, watching her.

It was probably just a couple of seconds, although at the time it seemed like minutes, before she shed her trenchcoat and draped it over the arm of the couch and walked into my bedroom. She paused for a second in the doorway to look back at me over her shoulder with that sexy half-grin that made my balls hitch every damn time she did it, then turned around again and walked in, toeing out of her strappy platform sandals as she peeled her black knit top over her head and let it fall to the floor. My breath caught in my throat as I saw the plane of her bare, beautiful back and realized she wasn't wearing a bra, and I felt a tingling in my fingers as she turned around and I saw the way her dark rosy nipples looked under the yellowish light of the bedroom.

Everything happened quickly after that as anticipation gave way to the momentum of need.

She slipped her hands under my T-shirt and ran her fingers up my sides, hooking the hem of my shirt with her thumbs as she pulled it off and dropped it on the floor next to her own shirt. "I missed you," she muttered as her normally-deft fingers pawed at my belt buckle, finally managing to unclasp it and thumb open my jeans. I caressed my hand over her hair, reaching back and pulling gently on the hair elastic to let her hair down. I threaded my fingers through her silky hair, which seemed even softer, thicker and smoother after four months of pregnancy than I'd ever seen it before, as I felt her unzip my jeans.

"I damn near lost my mind, baby," I said as I kicked off my Vans and stepped out of my jeans, leaving them in a twisted lump at the foot of the bed as I watched her shed her own jeans and panties in a single wiggle then fall back on the bed. "I missed you so much."

I stood there at the foot of the bed, staring at the incredible sight in front of me, and I felt not only my body burn with raw need for her, but my soul open up and relax into the understanding that I needed her in all kinds of ways that, for some strange reason, I didn't even really appreciate until I found myself stumbling from day to day without her being there the way I'd grown so used to over the four months since we first came together.

I crawled onto the bed and crawled into her, not just burying myself inside of her, but letting myself drown in the experience of her as all of it—the way she feels, the way she smells, the way she touches me, the way she moves against me, the way she feels around me as I sink into her, the way her sighs shift to moans as our bodies meld into one—washed over me. Maybe it seems strange, but the realization of it, the reality of it, came in waves as we made love that night, stroke by stroke, sigh by sigh, minute by minute, until it finally became clear to me that the need I'd been feeling all week in her absence wasn't just about one kind of need, but rather about all the different ways I'd come to need her, and about all the ways she'd come to need me, as the separate lives we'd been leading had finally become woven into one.

After we made love, I turned out the light and lay there, spooned against her backside as she held my hand against the round of her beautiful pregnant belly, and I knew she knew it, too.

Knowing that she knew it, and that she needed me every bit as much as I needed her, in all the different ways we needed each other, left me with a feeling of completeness that I'd never really felt before.

It was only four days, but in that four days, I learned more about us—and about all the ways we need one another—than I had in the previous four months.

* * *

**A/N: **_Sometimes a story or a chapter turns out different than I planned. I thought this piece would be a smutty one, but that's not where the muse wanted to take me. The way it turned out seemed to work for me._

_The question is, did it work for you? Please, tell me—I want to know. Knowing what works for you, or what doesn't work, makes me a better writer, which helps me write a better story for you next time._

_So please, share your thoughts as I've shared mine. Let me know what you think. Consider leaving a review._

_Thanks for reading._


	10. The Dark Side of the Moon

**Age of Discovery**

* * *

**By:** dharmamonkey  
**Story Rating:** M  
**Chapter Rating:**T  
**Disclaimer: **Someone else owns Bones, but I am interested in renting Booth. A five-hour minimum would apply.

* * *

**A/N:** _This short ditty briefly references a couple of events occurring after the Season 7 premiere, but it falls along the same lines, thematically, as the rest of the series, so I posted it as part of AoD as opposed to a free-standing oneshot. You'll see why._

* * *

**Chapter 10: The Dark Side of the Moon**

* * *

I have long understood that things which are not visible may still exist. The mere fact that something cannot be perceived with the naked eye does not, alone, mean it does not exist, and processes which are not readily visible still can (and do) occur.

I was walking around the house with Christine the night before last, trying to quiet her after she woke up crying, and I found myself lazily browsing Booth's CD collection on the shelf as I held her, propped on my hip, and rocked her back and forth. Booth refuses to organize his CDs alphabetically by artist name, and instead organizes them in groups by subgenre (so, for example, his Booker T & the MGs CD sits on the shelf next to the Isley Brothers and Marvin Gaye because they all fall into "R&B"). I'd just managed to get Christine's crying quieted down to a soft, albeit still somewhat fussy murmur, when I happened upon another group of CDs (the "prog rock" section, I was told). I don't know why, but one album in particular caught my eye: Pink Floyd's "The Dark Side of the Moon." Maybe it was because Booth was playing this album on a loop a few weeks ago to celebrate the 40th anniversary of its release.

In any event, the album—or, more accurately, its title—got me thinking about Booth and the so-called dark side of the Moon. The term, of course, refers to the lunar hemisphere which is permanently facing away from the Earth and which is therefore never visible from Earth due to the occurrence of a phenomenon called tidal locking, whereby the gravitational gradient between Earth and its moon causes the tidally locked body (in this case, the Moon) to take as long to rotate around its own axis as it does to revolve around the other body. No matter where one stands on Earth, only one hemisphere of the Moon is visible and the other hemisphere—the so-called dark side of the Moon—is never, ever seen. The visible side can be seen when it is illuminated by the light of the sun, waxing and waning every 29.53 days, but the other side is never visible.

That other side is not actually dark, of course—like Earth, half of the Moon is always sunlit—but it is unseen and unperceived by those of us here on Earth. It is only seen from space, by satellites orbiting the Moon, like the Soviet Luna 3 probe that first photographed it in 1959, and Apollo 8, which enabled human beings to directly perceive that side of the moon for the first time.

Booth is rather like that. People who meet him see one side of him, the public-facing side of Booth, as it were: normally jovial, friendly and sweet, always charming, frequently witty, occasionally snarky, and—typically when his protective instincts are triggered or old emotional wounds are somehow opened anew—very rarely, angry. Booth's anger is usually like the flash-paper (i.e. nitrocellulose) used by bookies to destroy betting slips in the event of a raid: it burns brightly and extinguishes quickly, leaving very little residue behind. This is the side of Booth that everyone sees.

But there is another side of Booth, a side of him that very, very few people see, a side of him which, I suspect, he's only ever let _me_ see, at least in its unshaded entirety.

I saw glimpses of it early on in our partnership, for example, during the first year we worked together, when we sat down after Devon Marshall's funeral at Arlington and Booth confessed to me that he was still haunted by the things he did as a military sniper, including the targeted killing of a Serbian officer named Radić. _"It's never just the one person who dies,"_ he told me. _"You know, we all die a little bit, Bones. With each shot, we all die a little bit." _I saw it on that awful night I hate to remember but will never, ever forget, the night we stood on the steps of the Hoover and he told me he wanted to _"give this thing a shot"_ and try to be together, he and I, romantically. I saw it in the brief flicker in his eyes when he came back from Afghanistan and we sat there on the Mall and he showed me a photograph of a group of Afghan men he served with over there. I saw it in the hollow, distant look he had in his eyes when he looked down at Vincent, his hands pressed firmly over Vincent's chest as he tried to staunch the blood pulsing from the bullet wound. And I saw it when we were standing in Angela's and Hodgins' bedroom, trying to decide among us what to do since it appeared that Pelant had struck again, in the hard stare and flare of his nostrils that lasted only fractions of seconds after Hodgins asked Booth how many kills he had.

There is another side to Booth that no one sees—the side that is tender, haunted, vulnerable, self-critical, reticent and, from time to time, more than a little sad—and it is that side of him that I have come to know is the proof that he is a strong man. It is in his weakness, if you will—in his well-hidden frailties—that I have come to see how resilient he is. He takes great effort to hide that part of himself from the rest of the world, even from those who are close to him like Angela, Pops and Cam, but in front of me, he lets his guard down. I alone have seen him sit in a dark corner with a glass of whiskey and brood. I alone have seen the tears well up in his eyes and roll down his face as he sifted through the contents of the box of his father's belongings. I alone have held him as he curled up in a fetal position and silently cried himself to sleep when the memories of the things he has done or seen overwhelmed him in the small hours of night.

In a way, I have gone where no one else has gone before, and seen what no one else has seen, but only because Booth has been willing to let me in, to bare himself to me the way he has never bared himself for anyone else. At one time, I think he was afraid to show me that side of himself lest I think him weak, but the more of it I saw, the more I came to admire his strength, because he tucks all of that vulnerability away and still steps out, every day, to help others, to be strong for others—including for me—even though a part of him feels very tender and vulnerable. Rather than thinking less of him, I think more of him for this. The fact of the matter is, a lot of what I admire the most about Booth are things which no one else sees.

Just because it cannot be seen doesn't mean it does not exist. I know this now, more than ever.

* * *

**A/N:** _I know. It wasn't much. __But it came to me this morning on the drive into work, and I hope you found it of some value. (Note reference to space exploration, continuing the AoD theme of exploration and discovery.)_

_In any case, please, share your thoughts as I've shared mine. Let me know what you think. Consider leaving a review._

_Thanks for reading._


	11. Excessive Force

**Age of Discovery**

* * *

**By:** dharmamonkey  
**Series Rating:** M  
**Chapter Rating:** T  
**Disclaimer:** I don't own Bones. I am, however, interested in renting Booth. A five-hour minimum would apply.

* * *

**Chapter 11: Excessive Force**

* * *

He'd been brooding since the moment we walked out of the hospital.

And like he always does when he gets into one of his brooding states, he shut down. He stopped talking. A veil descended over his eyes—giving him the same distant, vacant, glassy-eyed expression I'd seen from him a couple of times before—and he fell stone-silent. His jaw hardened, his masseter muscle tensing to the point that I could see a ticking on the sides of his face, right over his temporomandibular joint. He didn't say a word or even utter a guttural grunt or growl.

He was angry. _Very_ angry.

And I didn't understand why. The stony silence he observed as we walked from the ER to the Sequoia continued for the entire duration of our drive back to my apartment, and as I stood there unlocking my front door, I found myself slightly surprised that he'd even followed me upstairs considering how furious he was. After fumbling a bit with my keys, I managed to unlock my door and walked in, glancing over my shoulder to see him standing there on my doorstep, hesitating for a second or two before he walked in and slammed the door behind him, not once making eye contact with me as he yanked his FBI badge wallet out from where he'd tucked it into his waistband and unsnapped his gun holster from his belt, setting his service pistol on the table in my foyer with a loud _clank_. I dropped my messenger bag on the floor next to the coat closet and walked into the kitchen, waiting for him to say something.

But still, he didn't say a word.

Generally, I don't mind silence. In fact, when I'm working, I prefer silence—that is, the absence of interpersonal conversation. I would rather put on my earbuds and listen to music on my MP3 player than listen to the pointless chit-chat between my graduate interns or between Cam, Angela and Hodgins.

But Booth is the exception. I have grown accustomed to the comforting sound of his chatter over the course of the six years we have worked together, and that of course didn't change after we began to spend almost all of our time together in the eight weeks since we first made love and embarked on a romantic relationship. To be in his presence and not to hear his voice, or even the sound of him humming or whistling between his teeth, was extremely unnerving. Reaching into the refrigerator to fetch myself a bottle of San Pellegrino (my after-work beverage of choice since finding out that I was pregnant), I glanced over my shoulder again and saw him standing there, his tie loosened and the top button of his dress shirt unbuttoned as he stared in my general direction but seemed still unwilling to give me eye contact.

I couldn't take it anymore—the silence between us—and so finally I said something that I thought would ameliorate the tension.

"It really wasn't that big a deal, Booth," I told him.

He blinked once, then his brown eyes swiveled around and drilled into me as his nostrils flared, showing more emotion in that moment than I'd seen from him in the previous hour since he'd shut down and shut me out. I heard a quiet growl rattle in the back of his throat as his eyebrows sloped low and hard over his eyes, which all of a sudden appeared darker than usual because his pupils were significantly dilated, and then, after we simply looked at each other in silence for a couple of more seconds, he finally spoke.

"He tried to run you over with a fucking car," he said, each syllable distinct as he ground out each word, his teeth clenched as he spoke.

"And I easily stepped out of the way," I said, realizing as soon as I'd spoke that my words sounded like more of a protest than a comfort. "I saw what he was going to do, anticipated his actions, and safely moved to the side before his vehicle came anywhere close to me."

Booth's face flushed and I saw his temples pulse as his temporalis muscles tightened. "It doesn't matter, Bones," he snapped, taking a step towards me. "He tried to kill you. And if you hadn't been paying attention, he would have—"

Exasperated by his inability to see events for what they were, not what they might have been, I interrupted him. "I_ was_ paying attention, Booth, and I avoided injury," I said. "It doesn't justify you slamming his head against the pavement after you removed him from his vehicle."

The suspect had eluded Booth and his FBI team all day, despite the fact that Booth called in a "BOLO" ("be on the lookout") for him, and we were actually en route to interview his girlfriend at her place of employment when we got the call that the suspect's 1998 Crown Victoria had been sighted heading north on 16th Street NW. We were the closest unit to that particular location, so Booth put on his emergency lights and pursued him.

The suspect abandoned his vehicle near Rabaut Park and fled on foot into a residential area along Hobart Street comprised almost entirely of row-houses. We followed him in the Sequoia and saw him cut across an empty lot between two houses, and so, left with no other choice, we exited our vehicle and pursued him. Booth had drawn his weapon from his holster and chased him, yelling over his shoulder for me to stay back with the truck, but because we are partners, and partners stick together, I followed him, running about fifteen feet behind him as the suspect wound his way between houses and down alleys, snaking his way through the neighborhood and towards Irving Street. The suspect again ran between two houses, with Booth about ten feet behind him when Booth tripped over an exposed tree root and fell. I caught up with him, helping Booth to his feet again, and was again instructed to stay back. I could hear Booth curse as he ran down the long alley behind the houses and realized that he'd lost the suspect.

About ninety seconds later, Booth was walking back towards me with his hands on his hips as he struggled to catch his breath when we heard the squeal of tires on pavement. We saw a ten year-old Honda Civic hatchback come barreling down the alley behind where I was standing. I would estimate that the vehicle was going forty or fifty miles per hour at that point, when I turned around and realized the driver of the vehicle was the suspect himself. Booth raised his pistol and shouted at me to get out of the way as the Honda accelerated and swerved towards me. It was one of those moments where one's epinephrine level surges and one's perception of time seems altered such that events appear to happen in slow motion. I saw the car coming towards me, careening from the middle of the alley towards where I was standing, about six feet away from the corner of a house. As the suspect turned even more sharply in an attempt to knock me over with his vehicle, I turned and stepped a couple of feet to the right, avoiding being hit by a margin of twelve or eighteen inches, then watched as the suspect plowed his car into a group of aluminum trashcans. The trashcans fell over but the collision caused the suspect to hit his brakes, slowing him down enough that Booth squeezed off a couple of rounds from his pistol as he ran towards the car. Seeing that I was untouched and uninjured, he approached the driver's side and ordered the suspect to put his hands up.

The suspect complied, letting go of the steering wheel and raising his hands as he watched Booth, wide-eyed as he said something to Booth that, from that distance, I couldn't quite make out. Still holding his pistol aimed at the suspect, Booth opened the driver's side door and grabbed the suspect by his shirt—he wasn't wearing a seatbelt—and pulled him out of the stolen car and pushed him onto the pavement. Tucking his pistol into its holster, he grabbed the suspect with both hands and I was expecting him to roll the man over onto his stomach so he could put him in handcuffs.

But instead, Booth called him a_ motherfucker_ and pulled his neck and shoulders off the ground, told him he was a_ fucking piece of shit_ and slammed the man's head against the asphalt. _"You stupid motherfucker sack of shit,"_ he growled at the man as he punched him in the mouth, drawing blood as he split the suspect's lip open with the blow. _"You tried to kill my fucking partner, you fucking bastard,"_ he hissed, punching him again before I finally pulled him off of the suspect, who by that point was bleeding from the mouth and the back of his head, where his scalp had been lacerated as a result of having it smacked against the street. He was murmuring unintelligibly, clearly stunned by the force of the throttling Booth gave him and the two solid blows he took to the maxilla and the mandible when Booth punched him. _"You made a big fucking mistake,"_ my partner spat as I managed to pull him to his feet. I held Booth by his shirtsleeves and pulled him away from the suspect, but he shrugged out of my grasp and stood over him, pointing menacingly at him. _"You have no idea how fucking lucky you are that you didn't put a scratch on her,"_ he said. _"They'd be hosing your fucking brains off this street if you had, you fucking worthless piece of shit."_

I'd never seen Booth that angry before, or that close to the edge of completely losing control. I could see the rage simmering just below the surface and, for a minute, I wasn't sure if I would have been able to keep him from making good on his threat and killing the suspect.

"He tried to hurt you," Booth explained, his eyes glistening with moisture as he watched me twist open the cap of my Pellegrino. I saw his brow furrow again as his breaths began to shorten in response to a rapid increase in his heart rate. "You shouldn't have followed me," he told me, shaking his head as he reached for my arm. "I told you to stay back, to stay with the truck, but you didn't listen..."

"We're partners, Booth," I told him. "I did what I always do. I had your back." I saw in his darkened eyes nothing that even resembled acknowledgement, which surprised and angered me, since I had merely done as I had countless times before. "I'm your partner, Booth..."

"You're fucking pregnant!" he shouted at me, squeezing my arm tightly—tight enough to hurt—before he realized what he had done and let go, his face paling a little as he stepped back. "You're pregnant, Bones," he repeated, his voice quieter and more modulated as he leaned his arm against the top of the bar that separated my kitchen from my living room.

I rolled my eyes. "I know I'm pregnant, Booth," I replied, making absolutely no effort whatsoever to conceal my frustration. "I'm the one who's been regurgitating the contents of her stomach every morning for the past four weeks. I'm very well aware that I am pregnant."

He angled his head to the side and took a breath, licking his lips as he often does when he's under stress and trying to figure out what to say. "Bones," he said, his voice much softer and warmer than it had been just moments before. "I love you. You can't go taking chances like that, alright? I can't bear the thought of losing you, or of us losing this baby. You've got to—"

Now it was my turn to be furious. "Look," I snapped. "You can't go around assaulting people and threatening to kill them just because I'm pregnant, or pregnant with your child. You don't need to protect me by going around terrorizing people, Booth. I can take care of myself now no less than I could a couple of months ago before we started having sex and conceived a child. Nothing has changed."

He winced. "_Everything_ has changed," he said, his voice rising in volume again. "God dammit. You don't have a fucking clue, Bones. You don't have a fucking clue at all..."

Never, not once in the six years we had worked together, had he ever used that kind of language with me in anger. I'd heard him curse before, of course—while out in the field in pursuit of a suspect or person of interest, or sitting in the observation room preparing to go back in after a frustratingly fruitless round interrogating a suspect, and, yes, even at home, in bed, when in the throes of a sexual encounter, as his arousal peaked in the moments before he orgasmed—but I had never, _ever_ heard him grow so angry with me that he cursed like that. And that, as much as the subject of the argument, made me feel even more indignant.

"What are you talking about, Booth?" I asked him. "I know exactly—"

"I've killed for you," he said, cutting me off. "To protect you. And I've come close to murdering for you, because you were in danger."

"I know you have," I snapped back, so swept up in my own emotion I didn't notice the distinction he'd drawn. "But that's different. That's more or less a matter of self-defense, but this—"

"No!" he shouted. "You don't understand, Bones. I came this close..." He gestured with his thumb and forefinger. "_That_ close to blowing a man's fucking head off in an alley to protect you. I would have _murdered_ a man to protect you. I would have taken a man's life in cold fucking blood to keep him from going out and sending someone out to hurt you."

I suddenly felt a wave of light-headedness wash over me. For a second, my breath caught in my throat. "What?" I rasped, leaning against the kitchen counter for balance as I felt a swirling sensation of unexplainable foreboding in my belly.

Booth pushed away from the bar and turned away, walking into my living room with his hands on his hips as he shook his head and muttered under his breath. I thought of saying something, but for some reason, I held back. After a few seconds, he turned around again and gave me a hard look—the kind of angry, impatient, narrow-eyed look I've seen him give other people countless times.

"That gang-banger, Roberto Ortez," he began, his words clipped as he bit each one out through gritted teeth, his dark eyes burning with fury and another emotion I couldn't quite identify. "The one who was head of that Salvadoran street gang, Mara Muerte, you know?"

"I remember him," I said. I remember standing in front of the elevator at the Hoover, waiting for the car to get up to Booth's floor when Ortez sidled up to me, a smirk on his face as he leaned in close to me, close enough that I could smell his sweat and the odd scent of the gel he used to slick back his hair. "He tried to intimidate me, but I wouldn't give in and subordinate myself in response to his dominance display. He became frustrated, and tried to grab me. I punched him in the face, and when he tried to punch me back, I kicked him and struck him again." I hadn't thought about that case in years, but once reminded of it, I felt myself right back there in front of that elevator. "I think I fractured his nasal bones," I said. "Or came awfully close."

Booth rolled his jaw from one side to the other, but didn't say anything for a few seconds. After a moment, he looked me straight in the eyes and said, "You humiliated him." He took a couple of steps towards me again. "You beat the crap out of him," he said. "Laid him flat on the ground, right there in front of everybody."

"So?" I said impatiently. "I don't see your point. I struck him in self-defense..."

Booth blinked a couple of times, and I saw that hooded, blank, closed-down expression descend once more over him as his gaze seemed to look past me, rather than at me. "He put a hit out on you, Bones," he said darkly. "I found out from a guy in the Organized Crime unit."

I stood there and watched him, his brown eyes shifting slightly as he seemed to glance down and away, and then back up again, but would not make eye contact with me. "I tracked him down," he explained. There was a strange aspect to his voice, a hollowness almost. "In an alley." He swallowed, his Adam's apple dipping low in his throat as he shifted his weight from one foot to the other. "I found him. He tried to walk away from me, but I grabbed him and shoved him against the wall. He said some shit about how this was his neighborhood, and I punched him in the face." He hesitated, and I saw him nibble on the inside of his lip as he finally brought his gaze to meet mine. "I pulled out my gun—_my_ gun, Bones, my own personal .357, not my service weapon—and I shoved it in his mouth as I held his head against that brick wall. I told him...I told him that if anything happened to you, I could come after him, and I'd kill him."

I felt my breath hitch in my throat again as I saw the tension in my partner's face. "Booth, I..."

He shook his head and kept talking. "I told him that this was not an FBI thing, but it was between him and me. I told him I would kill him, and you know what, Bones?" I could see a fear and a sadness in his eyes, and I knew he was telling me the truth—not that he would outright lie to me, but this was a secret he'd kept for five and a half years, and now, for whatever reason, he was telling me.

"I would have," he said. "I would have fucking killed him. Without a fucking question. I would have killed him. I could have killed him then, that afternoon. A part of me wanted to, Bones, but I didn't. But you know, had he gone ahead and tried to hurt you, I'd have done it. I'd have fucking killed him. And he fucking knew it. I could see it in his eyes. He knew it."

My mouth was gaping open at that point, and I was so surprised by this revelation that I found myself at a loss for words for a minute. "You hardly knew me then," I said quietly. "We'd been working together only a few months."

"Yeah," he said with a nod, stepping closer to me, close enough that I could hear him draw a breath. "But even then, Bones, I knew that I couldn't fucking live without you. If I lost you, I don't even—" He suddenly fell silent and looked down at his feet. "Don't you get it, Bones?" he asked me. "You're my world. You're everything to me. You've been everything to me for a long time. If anything happened to you, Bones, or to our baby, because I couldn't keep you safe, I don't think I could live with myself. I..."

His voice trailed off and he just stared at me for a few seconds, then leaned in, cupping my jaw in the palm of his hand as he gently pulled my lips to his and kissed me. His lips pressed hard against mine, his kiss pinning my lip against my teeth in a way that spoke of the desperation and fear that I'd been hearing on the edge of his voice since we got home. Booth's mouth moved against mine and I tried to return his kiss, but he pulled away, his breath falling in shallow gasps as he stroked his fingers along the side of my neck, just under my ear.

"I can't lose you, Bones," he said, his voice scarcely a rasp as his brown eyes shimmered back at me with unshed tears.

He closed his eyes and swallowed, then shook his head and sighed. After a moment, he opened his eyes again, finally letting his hand fall away from my face as he took a half-step back.

I felt an ache in my chest at the thought that he would have done what to him was unspeakable—indeed, he had kept this secret from me for years, and I think he would have kept it from me for many more had it not slipped out in the midst of an emotional outburst. He had never taken a human life completely on his own account, without the comfort of a chain of command or legal license to absolve him in his own mind from the unredeemable sin of voluntary homicide. The idea that he came close to doing that for me cut me deeply.

"I'm sorry," I said quietly. "That you had to—"

"No," he whispered. "That's not why I...what I'm trying to tell you, Bones is...I just..." His voice, heavy and cracking with emotion, trailed off as he struggled for words. He reached into his pocket and pulled out his BlackBerry, dropping it on the top of the bar with a plasticky clatter. "Look, I'm gonna have to go in there on Monday morning and explain to Hacker and Cullen why what I did today wasn't excessive force," he said. "And maybe it was, from the standpoint of procedure and protocol and all that shit. I don't think anything will come of it, okay? But still..."

"Booth," I said. "You..."

"No," he grunted, cutting me off again. "Listen. I lost my shit today, Bones. I know I did. I broke the fucking rules. And I know I did. But I can't lose you, baby. I can't...I can't live without you. I couldn't then..." He swallowed thickly and I saw his fingers grip the edge of the bar-top as he tried to blink away the memory of that afternoon in Little Salvador five years ago. "I couldn't then, Bones, and I sure as hell can't now."

I reached for his hand, gently prying his fingers loose from the edge of the bar with my thumb. "Listen, Booth," I said. "I understand. I don't like it, the idea that I'm not going to be able to do all the things I could do with you before when I had your back." I took his hand, clasping his big, veiny hand between my palms as I felt it tremble in my grasp. I could feel, even just holding his hand, how shaken he was by what had almost happened to me, and what he had almost done as a result.

"But, Booth," I said, squeezing his hand again as I looked into his warm, expressive brown eyes. "As much as I hate the idea of _that_, I hate even more the idea that you would feel...the way you did today...and that you might hurt someone simply because they wanted to hurt me. I know how that wounds you, even the idea of it, and..." I pressed my lips together as I felt incipient tears tingling the lining of my nasal passages. "I don't want you to have to feel that way."

He nodded, reaching up with his free hand and wiping the moisture from his eyes with the heel of his hand. "I can't lose you," he said. "I just can't..."

"You won't," I told him, knowing in that moment that, even though I could never really promise such a thing, it was what he needed to hear. "You won't."

He nodded and I let go of his hand. It was then I saw how some of the tension that had been hardening his jaw and tightening his shoulders seemed to have relaxed somewhat, whether because of hearing my reassurance or, perhaps, by the fact that he had finally confessed to me what he had done all those years ago, the memory of which had apparently haunted him as he thought himself capable of the one thing—murder—that he'd devoted his life to preventing.

I stepped towards him, and he opened his arms to me. I leaned into his embrace as I felt one of his arms curl around my waist and he brought his other hand up to cup the back of my head as I laid my forehead to rest on his shoulder. I felt him shudder once, then hug me tighter against his chest, turning his head slightly as he placed a soft, almost feather-light kiss on my temple.

I heard the quiet sound of him swallowing and felt the delicate touch of his fingers stroking my hair as his breaths began to fall more slowly and evenly.

"Everything's gonna be okay," he whispered—whether to me or to himself, I wasn't sure.

I nodded against his shoulder and felt him hug me tighter.

"It's okay..."

* * *

**A/N:** _I went out on Twitter and asked for a prompt to jump-start my muse._

**SammieAtHome**_ suggested I write about a Season 1 moment with echoes of the Season 7 future. That in turn got me to thinking about how the beginning (Season 1) would look to our heroes, looking back at those earliest days of their partnership from the vantage point of their early days as a couple. This was the result._

_Please, let me know what you think. Share your thoughts as I've shared mine. Your feedback feeds my muse and means the world to me._

_In any event, thanks for reading._


	12. Raising Lazarus

**Age of Discovery**

* * *

**By:** dharmamonkey  
**Series Rating:** M  
**Chapter Rating:** T  
**Disclaimer:** I don't own Bones. I am, however, interested in renting Booth. A five-hour minimum would apply.

* * *

**A/N****: **_This bad boy is a sequel to Chapter 11, "Excessive Force." If you haven't read that one yet, I highly recommend you do because what follows will make a hell of a lot more sense if you have. In any case, enjoy!_

* * *

**Chapter 12: Raising Lazarus**

* * *

It was a conversation I'd been dreading.

At eight o'clock on the Monday after I arrested Ken Martinez on suspicion of double murder, extortion, racketeering and—after he tried to mow my partner down with a stolen car—attempted murder of a person assisting an officer of the United States Government in the performance of their official duties, I had to report to Deputy Director Cullen's office to meet with him and Assistant Director Hacker to discuss the circumstances of the arrest and, specifically, the injuries Mr. Martinez suffered during the arrest.

I'd been accused by Martinez's attorney of using excessive force in carrying out the arrest, and had to answer for those allegations.

I walked into Cullen's office, wearing my best suit and a brand-new tie, and black wingtips instead of the more casual slip-on loafers I usually wear. Cullen was sitting behind his desk reading something, and glanced up at me with his reading glasses sitting low on the bridge of his nose. When he peered over the rims of the glasses, I felt like was back at South Philadelphia High School and had been called into the principal's office for skipping class to smoke cigarettes and make out with my girlfriend behind the bleachers. I'd been a bad, bad boy and now it was time to face the consequences.

I turned my head and saw my boss, Hacker, sitting in one of the chairs in front of Cullen's desk. He looked up at me and narrowed his eyes as I unbuttoned my suit jacket and sat down. I cleared my throat and said good morning to them. Cullen peeled off his reading glasses and set them down on his desk with a loud clatter.

He didn't say a word, but instead handed me a piece of paper.

I looked down at it and saw it was copy of a sworn affidavit given by a resident of one of the row houses backing up to the alley where I'd arrested Martinez. In it, the affiant claimed to have seen the entire thing go down and said that I pulled Martinez out of the car, threw him on the ground, then proceeded to slam his head against the ground a couple of times and punch him twice in the face before my partner pulled me off of him.

I could have denied it, but I didn't.

"Yes, sir," I told Cullen. "I got pissed, and I got a little rough with the guy...sir."

Cullen, who I've worked with for more than ten years, didn't break eye contact with me as he sighed and said, "The man had to have four stitches to sew up his lip and a tooth glued back together after you damn near knocked it out of his mouth."

My heart begin to race and I wondered if I was going to be suspended pending an investigation, which I was pretty damn sure was going to end with me being terminated. Suddenly, my mouth went dry and my brain started running a million miles an hour as I thought about what I would do with myself if I lost my job.

I knew that what I did was wrong. It was against the rules. I made a mistake. I should have kept my head about me, no matter what the circumstances. I knew better. I used to be a sniper, for God's sake, and I knew that I had to focus on the mission, never mind what my personal feelings were. I messed up. I let my feelings—my anger and my fear—get the best of me. I knew there was only one thing for me to do. I had to come clean, to admit what I did, why I did it, and acknowledge to my superiors that I fucked up, and hope to God that they would look at my service record as a whole and cut me a break even though what I did was exceptionally stupid and completely out of line as far as FBI policy was concerned.

I took a deep breath and clenched my hands into fists, cracking my knuckles as I pulled my thoughts together in my head.

_Just tell 'em, _the voice in the back of my head prodded me. _It is what it is. Bite the bullet. 'Fess up and face the consequences._

I cracked my knuckle one more time then raised my head and looked Cullen straight in the eye.

"He tried to run over Bones with his car," I explained. "The affidavit leaves that out, sir, probably because she didn't go to look out her window until she heard all the trashcans get knocked over. But he drove down that alley at a high rate of speed and aimed his car at Bones. He tried to kill her, using that stolen car as a weapon. And, yeah, I kinda lost it. If you saw somebody try to mow your loved one down with their car, you'd probably lose your shit, too...sir."

I saw Cullen's jaw shift as he took in what I'd said, but he said nothing. Instead, it was Hacker who piped up.

"This isn't the first time you've been accused of using inappropriate force, Agent Booth," he said in that low, almost dopey voice of his that had been getting on my last nerve for years. I suppose he expected me to jump in and get defensive, but I said nothing, holding my silence as I kept my gaze straight ahead, watching Cullen's face. Whatever happened to me, it was going to be _his _call, not Hacker's. "I know you know what I am referring to, Agent Booth."

"Yes, sir," I said, nodding slightly as I continued to stare straight ahead.

Hacker cleared his throat, obviously unnerved by the fact that, while I had acknowledged him verbally, I did not look at him. He knew that I knew that my fate lay in Cullen's hands, not his. After a moment, he continued.

"In November of 2006, you were given an oral reprimand arising out of an incident earlier that month in which a civilian and former Bureau employee, Thomas Vega, alleged that he visited you in your office, and—after a discussion with him about the payment of a ransom to the Gravedigger to secure the release of your partner, Temperance—you forcibly grabbed him, slammed him onto the table in your office, then choked him as you threatened to kill him if the ransom deadline passed without Temperance's release."

"Yes, sir," I said simply, kneading the inside of my lip between my teeth as I continued to look at, and only at, the Deputy Director.

Cullen leaned forward in his chair and clasped his hands together, then gave me a hard, piercing look. "Both that incident and the incident last week involved your partner," he said. "But this incident, Agent Booth, worries me more. A _lot_ more." He paused, cocking his head to the side as he seemed to study me for a second. "Do you know why?"

"No, sir," I replied.

He leaned back in his chair, drumming his fingers on the edge of his desk as he let me sort of dangle out there amid the silence that hung between the three of us.

"The situation in 2006 was different," he began, his voice lyrical in that way that I'd only heard from people brought up in the bayou of Louisiana and (in his case) east Texas. "Dr. Brennan was in peril, and you thought—rightly or wrongly—that Mr. Vega had it in his power to communicate with the Gravedigger. While totally inappropriate and completely in violation of Bureau policy, I can see why you might have thought your actions that evening could mean the difference between life and death."

I nodded, but didn't say anything. I felt my teeth clench inside my mouth and the muscles of my neck and shoulders tighten as the memories of that day flooded over me.

I remembered standing there on the forensics platform at the Jeffersonian with Cam, Angela and Zack trying to decipher the text message I'd received from Bones: "6 7 16 M1.4" when the big screen that showed the time that Bones and Hodgins had left before they exhausted their oxygen supply showed "00:00:00" and Zack told us, "We are out of time." When I saw those digits on that screen, I felt like I'd been gutted, like someone had ripped open my chest and tore my heart out. The idea that I had lost her, that I had been unable to save her, left me shattered, swallowed up in a feeling of complete despair and emptiness bleaker than any I had ever felt before.

"I almost lost her," I said quietly, surprised as soon as the words left my mouth that I'd actually said them. When I said it, I'd been thinking about that horrible day four and a half years ago when my partner damn near died, suffocated in a car with Jack Hodgins, but as my words hung in the air between us, I knew that they rang just as true for what had happened with Martinez in that alley in northwest D.C.

Cullen leaned forward in his chair again and looked at me, but this time, his eyes seemed brighter, his expression softer and almost sympathetic as I felt him studying me again.

"It is well-known, not only to us but to everyone here at the Bureau, that you are extraordinarily protective of your partner, Dr. Brennan," he said. "I understand that, and Assistant Director Hacker understands that, okay? But what you did last week, Booth, was way out of fuckin' line."

"Yes, sir," I said meekly.

I remember wondering what Bones would've thought about all of this. She'd probably say I was subordinating my alpha male self to the authority of individuals of higher rank, _blah blah_, but the reality of the situation was, I was a dog sitting at the bottom of the pack's pecking order, and if I had to roll over and piss on myself to keep my job, I was going to do it. Because I had people counting on me—Parker, Bones, and that little baby of ours—and I wasn't going to let any of them down because I let my ego get the best of me. I'd already done one stupid thing. I wasn't gonna do another.

"Something's changed," Cullen said, narrowing his eyes again as he searched my face for a clue, a hint, then shook his head. "But I'm not sure what."

I blinked but otherwise didn't move a muscle or make a sound in response.

"You've always been a little reckless," he said to me. "You're always walking that razor's edge between procedure and insubordination, always keeping yourself just on the inbound side of the line. It's made you a royal pain in the ass to manage all these years." He arched his eyebrow and shrugged, then ran his hand over his bald head with a sigh. "But it's also made you a good agent, Booth. You think outside of the box. You question assumptions. You're creative. I respect that, okay? But I can't have you flagrantly breaking the goddamn rules. I know you, son. And this, _this..._" He pointed at the letter I still held in my hand. "This isn't you."

He cocked his head to the side and his dark eyes met mine with a firm, don't-bullshit-me stare. "What's going on?"

I set the letter on his desk, then looked at my hands as I remembered the way my knuckles had swollen up that night after colliding with Martinez's face. I knew I had to come clean. I closed my eyes and took a deep breath, then nodded again and, after briefly glancing over at Hacker, turned to Cullen.

"We're together," I said. "Me and Bones, I mean. She's..."

I wasn't sure how to explain what we were. At that point, we didn't really know. I loved her, and I knew she loved me, even though she hadn't yet said those words to me, but we hadn't really discussed how to describe what we were to each other, never mind how we'd explain it to other people. But I had to tell Cullen something, so I told him what I knew.

"I love her, sir. We're, well..."

I still struggled to find the words, which frustrated me. It's funny, in a way. It was so easy to be with Bones, to love her and to lose myself in her, but it was hard to describe what we were.

"We're together now, sir," I explained. "And, umm..." My voice trailed off again as I tried to figure out how to break the other bit of news.

We hadn't told anyone—not Angela or Hodgins, not Cam, not her dad, or my Pops, or anyone at the Bureau. We knew that we were going to have to say something soon. She was still having morning sickness, and the 'stomach bug' excuse wasn't going to cut it anymore. Plus, she was going to begin to show soon. I was pretty sure Cam and Angela already suspected something, just by the way they looked at me when I came into the lab and the sneaky, knowing smiles I saw them try to hide. I knew Angela knew that Bones and I were sleeping together, and I don't even think I needed to tell Cam. I guessed Cam knew from the look she had in her eyes the last time I came to the lab. It was the same look she gave me that night at the Founding Fathers after my brain surgery when she told me, _"You're in love with Dr. Brennan." _I think she was just waiting for me to say something to her about it.

In any case, Bones and I had done our best to keep it—us, and the pregnancy—under wraps as far as everyone else was concerned, until we'd figured out how to break the news. _The best-laid plans of mice and men, _right? I didn't have much of a choice that morning, though. My ass was in a sling and it looked like the only way I was going to save my job was to come clean.

"We're having a baby," I blurted out. "She's pregnant and, well, me and her—we're gonna have a baby. She's just ten weeks along, but..."

"I _knew_ it," Cullen said, leaning back in his chair again as a big smile spread across his face. "You know, the last time I saw you two together, at that briefing a couple of weeks ago, I couldn't quite put my finger on it, but something seemed different." He snapped his fingers and laughed, then wagged a finger at me. "I knew it. Well, congratulations. I'm happy for you—both of you—and I'm glad you two finally got your heads screwed on straight. I was starting to wonder if the two of you would _ever_ figure out what the rest of us knew a long damn time ago."

"Thank you, sir," I said, unable to contain myself as I was grinning from ear to ear. "We're pretty happy about it, too. Totally fired up."

I always knew Cullen liked me, despite himself and despite me being a pain-in-the-ass on account of my free-thinking rogue rebel ways, and I let go of a big sigh of relief when I saw his reaction. I turned and looked at Hacker, who sat there, his mouth hanging open a little and his eyes as wide as saucers. He was stunned. I'm not sure whether he was still hoping to find a way to coax Bones into going out with him again or what, but the revelation sure did seem to take him completely by surprise, which I have to admit gave me a certain feeling of satisfaction. _That's right, you little douche, _I thought to myself. _She was __never__ yours. She was always mine. _I know Bones would roll her eyes and launch into a big anthropological something-or-other if I ever told her I thought that, but I didn't care. She _was _mine, and I sure the hell was hers.

"I like you, Booth," Cullen said, yanking me out of my daze as I turned to face him again. "You're a good agent, and I don't want to lose you. So this is what I'm gonna do..."

I blinked, my breath catching in my throat for a second before I managed to croak, "Sir."

"I could discipline you pretty severely for this," he said. "But in light of the circumstances, and your prior record of service with the Bureau, I'm willing to cut you a break."

"Thank you, sir..."

"Hold on." Cullen raised his chin and gave me a stern look. "Don't thank me yet, son. You'll be suspended with pay for five days, beginning as soon as you leave this office. You'll need to leave your service weapon and your badge with me. Between now and Monday morning, you will need to attend two one-hour sessions with Dr. Sweets to discuss the Martinez incident before you get 'em back."

I groaned inwardly. "Two, sir?"

Cullen's eyebrows furrowed and he gave me a scowling look. "Yes," he said evenly. "Two." He saw me silently mouth the word _fuck _and smirked. "That's not all. Dr. Brennan is hereby suspended from field work for the duration of her pregnancy. She may, of course, perform her normal duties at crime scenes, but she will not be riding sidecar with you the way she has the last few years. I'm not sure about interrogations yet—I'll have to think about that. But I don't want her out there when you're pursuing suspects. That one's not negotiable. And I don't want her out there with you when you're interviewing witnesses in their homes or at their businesses without clearing it with me or Assistant Director Hacker first. Let's see how things go once you're back from suspension. Maybe we can loosen up on that one, but we'll have to see."

I felt like the rug had been pulled out from under me. "But, sir..."

Cullen held up his hand and shook his head. "No buts, Booth," he snapped. "You really fucked up, son. Big time. You know, I could send this one over to the Internal Investigations Section and let them string you up by your balls on this, okay? But I'm not going to. We're going to see that you stay in the field and keep doing what you do best. But clearly you can't do that if you're out there with your head all fucked up six ways to Sunday because you're worrying about your pregnant girlfriend getting hurt out there."

I swallowed, wondering what Bones would think of Cullen referring to her as my _"pregnant girlfriend."_ Although I couldn't be sure, I had a pretty good guess that she would not have taken that well.

"You understand what I'm saying, son?" he asked me.

"Yes, sir," I said with a nod. He was right, and I knew he was right.

It killed me that he was right.

Everything that Bones and I had, and everything that we were, grew out of the work we did, and the bond we formed out there in the field over the last six years. But he was right. I had to get my head around this new reality between us, and figure out how it would—or wouldn't—change the way we worked together. It was all too new to us to have to have even begun to figure that part out yet.

"Good," Cullen said. "You're gonna need to figure out who you'll be bringing out in the field if it's not Dr. Brennan. Charlie Burns might be a good option. Or Agent—"

"Sweets," I said quickly, his name falling from my lips before I'd really even thought it all the way through in my head. "He's worked with me and the squints for a while now. He knows how I work. The kid's really good with interrogations, and he knows when to let me lead and when to step in. I don't need an other agent, sir—I need someone who can bring to the party something that I don't have. That's why Bones and I work so well together." Of course, that wasn't the only reason, or even the biggest reason, and Cullen probably knew it, but it was beside the point. "I don't want to tag-team with another agent. I need someone who can do things that I can't."

Cullen looked at me for a minute, then glanced over at Hacker, who hadn't said a word since I dropped the bombshell about me and Bones and her pregnancy.

"Fine," he said in that terse way of his. "I assume you'll talk to him?"

I smirked. "Seems like I have to anyway, huh?"

Cullen rolled his eyes and laughed. "Alright, are we done here?" he asked. "I've gotta go see the Director about some kind of budget manpower allocation bullshit or whatever-the-hell. You know what you need to do, Booth."

"Yes, sir," I said, standing up and buttoning up my suit jacket again. "And thank you, sir."

Standing up from his chair, he reached down and picked up his reading glasses and tucked them into his shirt pocket. I stood there with my hands clasped in front of me as I waited to be dismissed. He gave me an appraising look, then smiled. "I'm glad for you, Booth," he said. "You deserve this. I know you won't let us down."

"I won't, sir," I said, determined not to let _any_ of them down—not Cullen after he showed trust in me by not throwing me to the disciplinary dogs, not Bones for all the courage and trust and, yes, love she's showed by opening herself up to being with me, and not that little baby of ours, who I loved so much already and wanted to be a father worth being proud of.

* * *

I knew when I woke up the next morning that it was time to face the music.

I was leaning over the sink in the bathroom squeezing a wad of toothpaste on my toothbrush when she stepped out of the shower. She twisted her hair up in one of those cute little microfiber turbans that makes her look like she's at the spa or something and wrapped her towel around her chest. She walked past me, reaching up and stroking her fingertips over my shoulder as she passed by and disappeared around the corner into her walk-in closet, which was now about one-third full of the portion of my suits, shirts and slacks I'd staged over at her place for all the nights I was spending over there.

"Hey Bones?" I said, spitting a foamy mouthful of toothpaste into the sink. I swished a mouthful of water around and spat that into the sink, too, wiped my mouth and wandered into the bedroom.

"What is it, Booth?" she said to me, walking out of the closet and tossing her towel in the hamper. She was wearing only a pair of cotton panties as she laid the blouse she'd chosen for the day on the edge of the bed. She walked over to her dresser and glanced over her shoulder to look at the blouse, then plucked an appropriately-colored bra from the dresser drawer. Turning around, she gave me a crooked smirk as she saw me staring at her almost completely naked body. "Yes?" she prompted me, reaching back and fastening her bra. "What is it?"

"Oh, uh..." I blinked myself out of the haze I'd fallen into as I watched her move around our room wearing not much more than what God gave her. "Sorry, ummm..."

I watched her pull the straps of her bra over her shoulders and then walk back over to the bed. Trying to ignore the twittering feeling in my groin at seeing the bare skin of her ever-so-slightly rounded belly in the warm morning sun, I shook my head and turned away, walking into the closet to pick out a shirt. Grabbing a pressed blue button-down shirt off the rack with one hand and a pair of blue jeans with the other, I tried to gather my thoughts as best I could before I turned around to face her again.

"You remember we have to see Sweets right after lunch, right?" I asked her, stepping into my jeans one leg at a time. "One o'clock."

She rolled her eyes as she pulled her knit blouse over her head. "Yes," she replied. "I know. I've had it on my calendar since you told me about it on Friday. I'm still not very happy about having to talk with Sweets again. I'd really hoped we were done with those after you more or less told him off that day we got stuck in the elevator."

"I know," I said. "But after the thing with Martinez, Cullen's making me do two sessions this week with Sweets before I can be released to go back into the field. They took my gun and badge."

"I know that, too," she said with an impatient edge to her voice. "But still, you know how I feel about psychology, Booth."

I nodded, standing there buttoning up my fly as I watched Bones put on her slacks. She'd had to go out and buy a couple of pairs in the next size up, since, although she wasn't really showing, she had begun to get a little roundness around the middle that she hadn't had before. I loved that belly of hers, and to see it start getting a tiny bit rounder made me smile.

"I'm gonna have to find someone to join me in the field," I said to her, hesitating a little as I waited for her to react. I'd told her the night before that Cullen was not going to allow her out in the field with me, at least for a month or two. Although she didn't take the news as badly as I'd feared she would, she was less than thrilled. "I mean, just while you're pregnant."

"I know," she said quietly. She pouted a little, and I knew she was still feeling a bit down about the change in our work arrangement.

I walked over to her and put my hands on her arms, giving her a gentle squeeze. "Hey," I whispered. "You know I would rather have _you_ with me, baby. You _know _that. But right now, that's just not in the cards. Cullen could've handed me my ass, but he didn't. He knows we're good together—that we're the best—and he wasn't gonna break up our team. But we've gotta roll with the punches a little here, and let this thing ride out, alright? It's not gonna be forever, and it's not like you won't be working with me. Hey..." I curled my finger under her chin and gently nudged her to look up at me. "It's just temporary," I assured her. "Let me prove myself to Cullen and Hacker, and we'll see if we can't ease you back into the non-dangerous field stuff. We can do this, okay?"

"Yes," she said, pulling away a little and looking down at her bare feet. "I know."

"Good." I kissed her on the forehead. "I'm gonna ask Sweets," I said softly, stroking the silky hair over her temple.

Bones suddenly jerked her head up and stepped away. "What did you say?" she asked me, furrowing her pretty little eyebrows as she stared at me in disbelief.

I hadn't expected to get that kind of reaction from her. "I, uhh—I said I was gonna ask Sweets to come with me out in the field." I saw something flicker behind those beautiful blue eyes of hers, but I wasn't sure what. I know she doesn't like psychology, and she hated having to do all those sessions with him, but I thought she liked Sweets. "You know—to help me out and watch my back, just until I can have you out there with me again."

She laughed. It was a dark, sardonic kind of laugh, almost a snort.

"What?" I said. "You don't think the boy wonder is the right guy? I know you like Burnsie but, I dunno, it's just—"

"There's something curiously ironic about it all," she said vaguely, stepping into her strappy sandal-style heels that matched the color of her blouse. Her eyes got a little wider and darkened a little—a change so subtle that I doubt anyone other than me would've even noticed it—and I saw her take a deep breath and look away a bit, as if she was remembering something.

"What is it, Bones?" I asked her again. "Hey..." She blinked away whatever her thought was and turned back to look at me. "Something's going on inside that genius brain of yours. What is it?"

She raised her hand up and shook her head. "It's nothing," she sighed, sitting down on the edge of the bed to readjust the ankle strap on the back of her shoes. "Really."

From the way she'd sighed, and the look in her eyes, and the way she was being so evasive after making that odd comment about irony, I knew it wasn't nothing. I watched her as she crossed her leg over her other thigh and fiddled with the strap, then sat down next to her on the bed.

"It's something," I said, my voice just a shade above a whisper as I looked at her face in profile. I couldn't believe how lucky I was to be able to wake up and have that face, that beautiful, brilliant, sweet face be the first thing I saw when I opened my eyes.

"No, it's..." She sighed again and fussed with the buckle on the strap. I could tell she was getting flustered.

"Bones, baby," I said, putting my hand on her shoulder. "It's not nothing, okay? Tell me. Something's bothering you about me asking Sweets to go out in the field with me. What did you mean about it being ironic? I mean, I know the kid's kind of a tool sometimes when he gets going into one of his psychoanalyzing schticks about us, but—"

"It's ironic," she said suddenly, uncrossing her legs and putting her hands on her thighs. She sighed and didn't say anything for a minute then, in a measured and deliberate tone began to speak again. "It's just a little ironic that you're proposing that he of all people is going to be the one to go out there with you, to watch your back and keep you safe, and to be the one who's supposed to provide some assurance to me that you'll make it home to me every night..."

My heart twisted when she said that. I felt at one buoyed by the idea that she thought of the end of the day as the time when I came home to her—even though we were actually splitting time between her apartment and mine—and yet my heart broke a little as I heard the fear in her voice, a fear I knew all too well myself, that something would happen to me and that someday I wouldn't come home to her because of something that happened out there.

At first, I wasn't sure what she was talking about. Her words echoed in my head. _"To be the one who's supposed to provide some assurance to me that you'll make it home to me every night." _Then it hit me, like taking a Louisville Slugger to the gut.

I remembered how, when we were making love the night before, she'd leaned down and kissed the star-shaped scar below my right shoulder. Feeling her lips graze that place, then suck at it softly as she rocked her hips against mine, had sent me over the edge that night. I knew that the two weeks that she thought I was dead had been painful for her, and that losing Vincent a couple months ago dredged up a lot of those feelings, so there was something really powerful about her kissing that little scar while we were making love. It was almost like kissing it as we were joined was a way of making peace with what had happened to us all these years, and all the times each of us almost lost the other.

"Hey," I said gently. "Don't hold that against Sweets, Bones. He was following protocol and he thought you could handle the news. It's—"

"That's not why," she said with a strange edge to her voice.

"What?" I coughed. "What do you mean 'that's not why'—of course that's why."

She looked at me for a minute, then stood up and walked over to the dresser where she kept her jewelry box. She opened up the little drawer on the front of it and pulled out a pair of tribal-looking dangly earrings. I saw her looking at me in the mirror as she slipped the hooks through the holes in her earlobes. Then she reached into the jewelry box again and pulled out a chunky beaded necklace with a silver pendant that matched the earrings.

"Bones?" I prompted her.

"It doesn't matter," she said, straightening the bottom hem of her blouse and smoothing it over her waist. "I've made peace with it."

I couldn't help but smile a little as I watched her fuss with her shirt. I adored that belly, and had taken to kissing its soft, subtle curves and silky skin as I moved my way down her body. I love every damn inch of her and I wanted to make sure not a day went by that she didn't know it.

I knew she was holding back, because it was clear from the glimmer she had in her eyes when she kissed my scar the night before that she was still moved—if not a little haunted—by the shooting and the fact that she thought I was dead for two weeks.

"I forgave him, Booth," she said. "I'm past it."

Her voice had a hardness and a waver to it that told me was trying to protect me from something. I knew it.

"No," I said, pushing myself off the bed and walking up to her. I reached for her hands and held them in mine. "Tell me. Tell me why."

Her gaze fell to our clasped hands and for a minute she didn't say anything. I felt a tightness in my chest, an ache—a pain in my heart—as I waited for her to tell me. She was keeping something from me, and I didn't know what or why, but I knew we had to be honest with each other. She needed to come clean with me about this—whatever _this_ was—just as I'd come clean with her about Ortez, and with Cullen and Hacker about me and Bones being together.

"Come on, Bones..."

She looked away for a moment, the way she always did when I pressed her on something. I could almost hear the gears turning in her head. After a few seconds, she brought her eyes up to meet mine, pursed her lips together and, with a quiet sigh, finally broke the heavy, tense silence that hung between us.

"I told him that you'd beat the shit out of him if you found out what he did," she said. She paused, then shrugged and clarified, "I don't use those exact words, but that was the gist of it."

I felt my muscles tense up. Whatever Sweets did was serious enough that Bones thought I'd kick his ass if I found out, and then proceeded to conceal it—whatever _it_ was—from me for over three years.

Bones saw my reaction and felt my hands squeeze hers more tightly before, realizing what I'd done, I let go of her hands and took a step backwards.

"What did he do, Bones?" I asked edgily. "Tell me."

"He knows what he did was wrong," she said, the upward lilt of her voice betraying her discomfort. "I called him on it, and he later told me he'd made a mistake. I forgave him for it, Booth."

I was getting angry. "Bones..."

"It was an experiment," she said quickly.

I felt my jaw tense up and my teeth clench in my mouth, hard enough that I could feel it in my temples. "What do you mean 'an experiment'?" I asked, reaching up and running my hand through my hair, which was still damp from my shower.

Bones took a deep breath and held it for a second before letting it go. "He wanted to see how I'd react," she said. "How I would respond to being informed of your death. He'd been studying us, and he wanted to quantify my reaction. I knew it after he said something to me when we were walking out of my office to go down to the basement to see the Gormogon's vault."

"That little fucker," I spat. "That little son of a bitch."

I turned around, reared my arm back and was about to punch the wall but I stopped myself just an inch shy of putting a hole through the drywall. The blood was roaring in my ears as I found myself fantasizing about punching Sweets in the nose and watching him bleed all over his starched white shirt.

"He deliberately hurt you," I said, wanting in that moment to wrap my arms around her and hold her, to protect her from being hurt, but I didn't move from where I stood. I could feel the anger rippling through me, and I didn't want to lay a finger on her when I felt like that.

"No," she told me. "He deliberately withheld the truth from me because he wanted to see how much I'd hurt. I'm not sure he knew how I'd feel hearing that you'd died. I think he had a hypothesis and he was testing it by—"

I wanted to kill him. In that moment, knowing that the shrinky little bastard had deliberately let Bones go on for two full weeks thinking I was dead and watched her suffer in the name of bullshit scholarly research, I wanted to fucking kill him.

"Don't defend him!" I snapped at her. "What he did was wrong. It was sadistic and—"

She took a step towards me and placed her hand on my chest. I could feel her delicate touch and the warmth of her slender little fingers against the skin of my chest because, once we got to talking, I'd never put my shirt on.

"Booth," she whispered, stroking two of her forefingers down the middle of my chest to my belly. "What he did was wrong. It was a gross breach of his professional responsibilities. I called him out on it. A couple of days after the case closed, after they took Zack away..." Her voice trailed off and I saw her wince a little at the memory. "Sweets came to see me in my office," she continued. "He apologized. He admitted what he did was improper, and that he was sorry he caused me unnecessary anguish. I accepted his apology, Booth. He seemed genuinely contrite. I have forgiven him for what he did."

I reached for her hand and pulled it over my heart. "I can't bear to see you to hurt," I told her. "Or to see you in pain. I just..."

I felt her fingers move beneath mine. "I know," she said. "That day he came to see me in my office, he asked me—pleaded with me, really—not to telI you what he did. I don't think he did that merely to avoid a beating."

"Hmmph," I grunted as I let go of her hand.

"He likes you, Booth, and I think he admires you," she said, a faint smile curving her lips for a moment before vanishing again. Her eyes narrowed a bit, then she gave a little nod and a small shrug. "I think he was afraid to disappoint you," she said. "That you wouldn't respect him anymore as a professional, and I think that means a great deal to him—having your respect."

I could hear it in her voice and see it in the way her pale blue eyes had brightened as she'd been speaking. She'd forgiven him. With that big, open heart of hers, she'd found it in her to forgive Sweets for what he did to her. I knew then, as I looked into her eyes, that I had to do the same. If _she_ could find the strength to forgive him, even though she was the one who'd suffered on account of what he did, then I had to forgive him, too.

I remembered the line from the Gospel of Matthew: _Forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive them that trespass against us..._

I decided then and there that I, too, would forgive him. I have never forgotten what he did, or the pain I know he caused the woman I love. But I forgave him. I let go of it. I let go of my anger and laid it to rest.

"Fine, but I'm not gonna go easy on him," I told her with a grin. "I'm gonna make the little schmuck earn his keep if he's gonna back me up."

She laughed, stepped foward and hooked her finger around one of my belt loops as she pulled my hips snug against her.

"I'd expect no less from you," she said with a sassy twinkle in her eye.

* * *

**A/N****: **_So, there you have it. That one was a bit longer than the usual AoD piece, but I hope you didn't mind. Props to readers _**SammieAtHome**_ and _**geraghtyvl**_ for furnishing me some of the ideas that morphed into the chapter you just read. I am endlessly fascinated by what we didn't see between the end of "Wannabe in the Weeds" and the beginning of "Pain in the Heart" so this was a chance to explore yet another angle on Booth's not-death._

_In any case hope you found this little ditty of some value. But don't keep me guessing. Share your thoughts as I've shared mine. Please—leave a review. Reviews are the currency of fanfic and the only revenue we fic-writers get, so please, consider leaving me a quick note. _

_Either way, thanks for reading. _


	13. Held

**Age of Discovery**

* * *

**By:** dharmamonkey  
**Series Rated:** M  
**Chapter Rating:** T  
**Disclaimer:** I don't own Bones. I am, however, interested in renting Booth. A five-hour minimum would apply.

* * *

**Chapter 13: Held**

* * *

These are the moments I like best.

I'm laying in bed. It's not quite midnight, I think—I'd roll over to look at the alarm clock behind me but I don't want to wake her—and the apartment is silent except for the ticking of the clock in my living room and the whispery sound of her breathing. She's asleep, her head resting on my shoulder as she lays on her side, her hand curled into a gentle fist against my chest, and every minute or two I feel her body shift a little and a sweet murmur in her throat as she settles more deeply into sleep. As soon as she quiets again, I resume stroking her soft, silky hair and let myself get caught up again in my thoughts.

I know I need to sleep, but it feels so wonderful to lay here, wrapping my arm around her as I wrap myself in the feel of her and the absolute joy of being here, now, with her. Sometimes I still can't believe that it's turned out this way after everything that's happened—everything that's happened to us, and everything we've done to each other, and to ourselves. It's times like these that I can just lay here and bask in it without the hurry or worries of that seem to nip at us during our waking hours. The only times I don't feel the hurry and the worry are when we're making love, as we were just doing a little while ago, and when I'm laying awake in bed, watching or listening to her sleep.

Had you asked me before what would be the best part of being with Bones once we were a couple (something I wanted so badly but which seemed for the longest time an impossibility that would keep gnawing at me until I finally had the strength to give up and stop wanting it), I would have told you that making love to her, or with her, would be the best part.

But it's not.

Don't get me wrong. It's not that making love to her is anything short of amazing. It was incredible that first night and every time since then, it still takes my breath away the moment I feel myself sink into her and the thrill of being able to share myself with her so completely sends a shiver down my spine and crackles through my limbs. I love looking up at her as she rocks into me and I see her mouth fall open and from her mouth hear a beautiful string of voiceless sighs and peaking moans that ends when she cries out and shatters around me while I snake my arms around her back and pull her close so I can feel her shudder as she rides out the last flutters of her release.

I love that.

But even more than that, I love this: the intimacy and the vulnerability of feeling her asleep in my arms.

Although both of us have been with other people over the years, I've never, ever felt with anyone the way I feel making love with her, and I know she feels the same way because she told me so one night. In a way, the fact that she told me that is itself proof of the trust she has in me. But I don't think anything she does makes me feel as blessed and grateful for her love and her trust as I feel when she sleeps in my embrace. That she would trust me enough to sleep with me (and by that I really mean _sleep _and not just sex) means she trusts me with her life, her future, her safety and her heart. Some of the worst things anyone has ever done to Bones have been done to her while she was asleep, not the least of which was her parents leaving her and her brother Russ, abandoning her to the horrors of the foster care system as they fled from the life they'd constructed for themselves and their kids in the belief that their children would be safer without them.

So for her to trust me like this—to allow herself to let go of her fears and be unguarded enough to fall asleep in my arms—means even more to me, in a way, than the fact that she shares her body with me and lets me share myself with her when we make love.

That she lets me hold her as she drifts off to sleep shows that, as bad as things got between us, everything is right for us now. After everything—all the false starts, all the miscommunications, misunderstandings and mistakes we made between us—we never lost that trust. Even when it all seemed to have fallen apart, we were the center, and the center held.

That's how I know, laying here now, that matter what the world throws at us, we will hold.

She makes another one of her sleepy murmurs and squirms a little in my arms, tucking her head more snugly in the crook of my arm before she settles in place again. I turn my head and look at her, unable to resist a smile as I see her quietly smack her lips and her eyelids flutter, the tiny crease in her slender eyebrows fading as she relaxes and becomes still once more. I take a small breath and press a soft kiss to her smooth forehead, letting my lips linger on her sweaty, sticky skin for a couple of moments before I close my own eyes and imagine myself sinking into the mattress and pillow beneath me.

_That's right, baby,_ I mumble quietly into her hair. _We'll hold._

* * *

**A/N: **_I know. It wasn't much, but the muse delivered it, and I felt the urge to pass it on._

_Let me know what you thought of it. Share your thoughts as I've shared mine. Please consider leaving a review._

_And thanks for reading!_


	14. Beyond Words

**Age of Discovery**

* * *

**By:** dharmamonkey  
**Story Rating:** M  
**Chapter Rating: **M  
**Disclaimer:** I don't own Bones. I am, however, interested in renting Booth. A five-hour minimum would apply.

* * *

**A/N: **_So, this is a scene that we never saw, that many (most?) of us wanted to see, and that countless fanfic writers (myself included) have written about before. For whatever reason, it occurred to me the other day that the moment in question might have gone differently than many of us had imagined. This, then, is my rendering of another way that moment (yes, __that__ one) might have gone._

* * *

**Chapter 14: Beyond Words**

* * *

In the seven years since Bones and I first began working together, a lot of words have passed between us.

And I mean, a _lot_ of words.

Whether we're at a crime scene (where my role is usually limited to standing around watching Bones and the squints poke and pick and stare at the bits and pieces of flesh and bone that used to be somebody), in the interrogation room (where my role is to do the interrogating and Bones' role, though you wouldn't know it sometimes, is to follow my lead and chime in when the subject of forensic evidence comes up), at the diner (where the waitresses stand behind the counter and stare at us with worried faces and conspiriatorial whispers when Bones and I eat a meal in silence), or in the Sequoia (where I'm not even sure I've ever turned on the radio with her in the car, never mind manage to change more than one or two of the presets to my favorite FM stations), we're _always_ talking.

She's said before that I have a big mouth, and I can think of dozens (hundreds?) of situations where she kept on talking long after she should've zipped it and let well enough alone.

When we're together, we're never bored. There's always something to talk about. One of the things about Bones is that her mind is always working, grinding away and chewing on something. She never stops thinking, and over time, she's grown comfortable enough that she does a lot of that thinking out loud, at least when she's with me. I think she likes doing that. Though she wouldn't always admit it, we complement one another (I know what that word means now, thanks to Bones), and when she thinks out loud in front of me, we can talk about her ideas and, by batting them around between us, come up with something better than either of us would have had we been left to our own devices.

So it's interesting that, in the moments before the space between us (which had been held open for far too long by everything we'd said and done between us) finally collapsed and we became what we always wanted to be, there really were no words.

What had happened that day, both to Vincent and to us, was beyond words.

Bones had been laying out there on my couch, crying. I knew that because her eyes were tired and red-rimmed, her face drawn the way a face gets when you've been crying for a long time and you've been exhausted by your own anguish to the point where you really can't cry anymore. I imagined her sitting there with the pillow clutched to her chest, crying into the pillowcase as she thought over and over again about Vincent, unable to let go of the sight of him laying there on the platform while his life's blood pooled on the floor under him until the brightness in his eyes flickered, then finally faded completely as his pupils widened and his breath stilled beneath my hands. She'd been trying to understand it all, to find the words to describe what had happened and to find a way to make the senseless loss make sense somehow.

She came into my bedroom and we talked as I tried to help her make sense of Vincent's death. More than once I've watched a man's blood ooze out of him as I felt his pulse flutter and finally disappear, and so, gently and with an ache in my heart as I listened to her broken voice, I tried to help her understand the meaning of Vincent's last words. I think I succeeded in doing that, but then she asked why—why, if there was a God, did He let Vincent die?—and to _that_ question, I had no answer.

"That's not how it works," I said quietly, unable to tell her anything else.

How did it work? No one knows. Why did God let Vincent die? I had no answer for her, no words of explanation to offer. There's no way for us to understand His purpose, the reason He had for taking Vincent from this world. Perhaps there was a reason; perhaps not. We will never know. We cannot know. She wanted to know why, but there were no words I could give her to explain why the innocent suffer and why Vincent had to die. There is no _why. _

There were no words because there was no answer.

She looked at me with open, wounded eyes and I felt my chest tighten because, in that moment, I felt her pain as my own. What she wanted most—an explanation—was the one thing I couldn't give her.

My heart broke for her.

I wanted nothing more than to take her pain away. If I could have, I would've gathered up her pain and her anguish, taken it into my arms and made it mine. I wanted to help her, to soothe her, and, perhaps above all, to assure her that I was there and that, even though it _could_ have been me dying on the platform had I not asked Vincent to answer my phone, it wasn't. I was alive. I wanted to reassure her that I was there for her, and that I would never, ever leave her. And, maybe a little selfishly, I wanted to feel her in my arms, to know that she was okay (because had I handed that phone to her, it would have been _her_ laying there dying, her blood on my hands as I looked down at her helplessly as the life drained out of her with each beat of her heart). I guess I, too, needed some reassurance, to know that despite everything we'd lost that day, I hadn't lost _her, _and that she was still with me_. _

For a few seconds, neither of us said anything, or even drew a breath, and it was then, in her silence and in the pleading look in her pale gray eyes, that I saw that she finally recognized what I knew as soon as I heard the word _"why"_ pass from her lips as a whisper.

There were no more words.

We were in a space beyond words.

Her mouth fell open a little as she drew a breath that rattled in the back of her throat, wincing as she tilted her head to the side and swayed towards the middle of my bed.

"Can you just—?"

I saw the features on her beautiful face contort in pain and reached for her as if by reflex.

"Yeah," I breathed as I pulled her against my chest and fell back against the pillows. She tucked her face into my shoulder and I felt her silky dark hair beneath my fingers as I wrapped my arm around her delicate, shivering frame.

"That's why I'm here," I whispered, wanting to tell her something, anything, that would take the pain away. "I'm right here. I know it's hard."

My words fell as murmurs, quiet and indistinct amid the soft sound of her muffled sobs as her body shook with grief and her slender fingers curled into a loose fist, clawing a little at my T-shirt as she lay there, half of her weight on top of me and the other half tucked snugly against my leg. I hugged her tighter against me, turning my head slightly as I brushed my lips against her baby-soft hair and drew a breath, inhaling a noseful of the faint scent of coconut shampoo and the familiar, comforting smell of _her._

"Shhhh," I whispered into her hair, my nostrils warmed by my own breath rolling of her scalp. She shuddered and I rubbed circles on her back with my hand. "Shhhhh..."

I'm not sure how long we laid there like that, my arms wrapped around her as she nuzzled her face into my chest and let me hold her, but after a few minutes, her soft sobs dissolved into ragged hiccups which in turn faded as her breaths became slower and steadier. I felt her head move against my chest and her body shift, which surprised me.

I opened my eyes and looked down to see her gray eyes shimmering back at me. My mouth fell open as I took a deep breath—or as deep a breath as I could with her laying on my chest—and I hesitated for a moment, trying to think of what to say when Bones suddenly shifted again. She sat up a little, propping herself up on one arm as she looked away for a moment, then brought her eyes back to meet mine. We just stared at one another, and I found myself gazing deep into those pale blue-gray eyes of hers, momentarily unable to breathe as I saw something flicker in those eyes—an openness, perhaps, or maybe a kind of acceptance—that seemed to draw the tension from her face.

My hand seemed almost to have a mind of its own as I realized I'd reached up to touch her face, cupping her slender, square jaw for a second as my thumb swiped across the gentle line of her cheek. I felt her smile against my thumb as I saw her lips part and her white teeth almost glow in the dim light of my bedroom. She closed her eyes and turned her head into my hand, nodding against my palm for a moment before she opened her eyes again. Not a word or even a sigh passed between us, but somehow, as our eyes met and her lips parted again, I felt something, a faint shiver as I, too, sat up and leaned into her. The tiny shiver I'd felt flared into a tingling, chest-filling heat and I felt the gentle crush of her breasts against me as her breath tickled my nose in the fractions of a second before her lips, soft and warm, pressed against mine.

For a few moments, our kiss was just that—a simple kiss—as our mouths met, her lips moving tentatively against mine as I heard a quiet murmur in the back of her throat. Still cupping her face in my hand, I let my other hand wander to her hip as I angled my head to the side, opening my mouth with a quiet sigh as I leaned in again, plucking at her lips once and then twice before she gave a quiet, throaty chuckle.

Feeling emboldened by her little laugh, I seized the opportunity and slid my tongue between her lips, licking into her mouth and relishing the feel of her lips and the sweet taste of her mouth. Though my body was screaming for satisfaction, I wanted to take it slow, but I knew from the way her fingernails clawed at my sides that she wanted more and she wanted it soon. With not so much as a grunt to herald the shift, she made a silent bid for control which I quickly granted, a sharp jolt of electricity crackling through my limbs and between my legs as her tongue swept into my mouth and twirled against mine.

A flash of desire and wonderment surged through me as I grunted _mmmffff _and realized that the brief hesitation she'd shown had all but vanished once our tongues had met and the plucking, nipping of her lips set the pace of our kiss.

Bones grabbed a handful of my shirt and I had assumed she was going to take it off of me. Instead, she pulled me closer, leaving me no alternative—not that I wanted to be anywhere other than where I was right then—but to surrender myself to her kiss and lose myself in the sweet, faintly spicy taste of her and to the delicious sounds I heard her make, from low moans that rattled almost like a growl to the tiny whine of protest I heard as I pulled away to suck in a lungful of air.

"_Nnnnggfff_," was all I could say as I looked back at her, my chest heaving and my lips feeling as tingly and kiss-swollen as I saw hers were. Slipping my hand up the back of her sweatshirt as I pulled her close for another kiss, I realized she wasn't wearing a bra. Her bare leg brushed against mine as she crawled on top to straddle me, and that's how I knew she wasn't wearing much of anything other than a pair of panties and my old FBI sweatshirt.

The familiar shape of the small of her back pressed against my hand and a faint smile danced across her lips as she crossed her arms in front of her, leaning back and away from me as she peeled off that faded old gray sweatshirt with its stretched-out collar and tossed it to the side where it fell to the floor in a quiet crumple.

From the moment I saw her fingers curl around the bottom hem of that sweatshirt, my eyes had been glued to her waist, and for several seconds after she took it off, my gaze did not move as I drank in the sight of her beautiful belly. It wasn't perfectly flat, but had a soft, subtle curve to it that my fingers itched to touch as my eyes traced the edge of her little navel and, after what I'm sure to her seemed like an eternity, skimmed up over her abdomen and finally, taking just a fraction of a second to briefly meet her glimmering gaze before looking back down again, settled on her breasts.

I didn't say a word, but drew a sharp breath as I looked at her naked chest for the first time and watched as her nipples tightened before my very eyes. I must have made a sound, a throaty _mmmmm _as my hands shot up from her waist to palm those gorgeous breasts, swiping my thumbs over the points of those tight, hard nipples and feeling my blood stir at hearing her gasp in response.

That gasp, that breathy little intake of air was more arousing in the half-second it lasted than all the dirty pillow talk in the world. As she ground her hips against me each time my thumbs and forefingers teased her nipples, the soft, downy lining inside of my sweatpants become an irritating barrier as my body ached for her.

"_OhmygodjesusBooth,_" she hissed when I leaned forward and closed my lips around her nipple, teasing it once with my tongue before drawing one hard suck and releasing it with a _pop, _unable to contain a grin as I looked up and saw those pale gray eyes of hers darker and bluer than I'd ever seen them before. Her lips parted and I thought she was going to kiss me again, but she took a breath and for a second I was sure she was going to say something, but instead she smirked and shook her head.

_"Hmnnnnh," _she hummed, leaning back against my thighs as she reached for the hem of my black T-shirt. She lifted it and I began to raise my arms when she smiled that sexy half-grin of hers and stroked her finger across my belly, chuckling at the way my muscles tensed at the delicate, almost ticklish touch. Her eyes twinkled with amusement as she did it again, brushing my hard-on with her forearm as she did. No sooner had I groaned _"jesusbones" _than she nudged my arms up and tugged my T-shirt over my head.

Her eyes brightened and a wicked, deliciously sexy smile spread across her face when her hands flew to touch my chest as quickly as mine had to touch hers. She splayed her fingers and I closed my eyes and sighed as the heat from her palms warmed my skin. Her fingers curled against my chest and I opened my eyes a moment before she scraped her fingernails across my nipples. My balls hitched at the unexpectedly pleasurable sensation and she pushed me back into the bed with a husky laugh that made me harder than I'd ever been. She hovered over me and, though I was somewhat distracted by the way her breasts swayed above me, I felt her shimmering blue eyes studying me as I watched her watching me, cataloging my reaction as she ground her hips once more into mine.

Up until that point, I'd been willing to let her lead and set the pace, but when I felt her rub her belly over my cock, the last threads of my patience and self-control snapped, and with a grunt I reached around and slid my hands underneath the waistband of her simple blue cotton panties. I looked her straight in the eyes as I caressed the silky-smooth skin of her ass and saw her face flush when I gave her a single gentle squeeze before I slid her panties off her hips.

Her eyes widened in mild surprise that I did that after letting her lead the way I had, but those eyes fluttered closed as I wrapped my hands around her hips and slid them up her sides until I was cupping that beautiful face of hers again. I threaded my fingers through her hair as I pulled her in for a kiss.

I heard a wonderful warble sound from her throat as she moaned into the kiss, then pulled away again, sucking on that sexy lower lip of hers for just a second and laughing a little at the kittenish mewl she made at the loss of contact. Her slender eyebrows furrowed and I watched her crawl backwards a bit to wriggle out of her panties. My breath caught in my throat when I saw those dark curls of hers and I felt my heart begin to throb in my ears. I wanted to be patient, to take it slow and draw it out but my patience crumbled at the sight of her, beautiful and nude, her porcelain skin flushed pink with desire as she kicked her panties to the side and gazed back at me with a hungry look that told me that she wanted this as much as I did.

Still, she hesitated for a moment as if waiting to see what I would do, then smirked and began to crawl back to me. The blood was roaring in my ears and my heart was racing as she took her place again straddling my thighs. As she leaned forward, I reached for her, snaking my arm around her waist as I gave her hip a nudge and rolled us over so that I was on top.

I sighed and grinned, realizing in that moment that finally, after all these years, I was where I'd dreamed of being—tucked between her legs, looking down at her incredible body and into her eyes as we hovered on the edge of giving ourselves to each other completely. For a time (maybe just a couple of seconds, though it seemed longer as I hung in that space where time stood still), I just knelt there, my body arched over her as I looked into her eyes.

I might have expected to see hesitation or uncertainty in those eyes, but I saw neither. Instead, I saw what I can only describe as relief in the way those shimmering blue eyes slowly blinked back at me, the features of her flushed face relaxed as she took a breath, smiled and gave me a single nod. That tiny gesture told me more than a thousand words could have.

_I'm ready, _she said with that nod.

My mouth fell open with a sigh (more of a breathy laugh, really) as a wonderful warmth washed over me.

"Bones," I whispered as I felt her slender fingers trace along the edge of my hips and linger there for second of pause that seemed to last forever as my body crackled with an intense awareness the likes of which I'd never felt before.

Those slender, delicate fingers of hers slipped under the waistband of my sweatpants and she pushed them off of my hips at the same time she pulled me toward her. I bent my head down and kissed her mouth, tenderly but briefly before crawling backward with a sheepish grin as she watched me wriggle out of my sweats one awkward leg at a time.

Acutely aware at that point that Bones was watching me intently and cataloguing every move I made, I nudged my sweats to the side with my leg and heard them fall on the floor at the side of the bed with a quiet _fwump_. I crawled back between her parted legs, finally allowing myself a moment to look at her body laying before me. My eyes roamed the gorgeous plane of her belly and its subtle curves, skimming along the hourglass shape from her hips up to her beautiful breasts (at that point, one of the few parts of her I'd tasted and worshiped with my hands and mouth) and along the wonderful space between her breasts up to that little notch at the base of her throat that I'd always loved and wanted to nuzzle as I kissed my way up her neck to her ears with their fleshy little lobes that I'd fantasized about sucking and nibbling on God-only-knows how many times.

I wanted to take my time, to make love to her the way I'd always hoped I would—slowly, taking all night to worship every square inch of her, making her feel as good as I knew she would make me feel as I touched, kissed, licked, sucked and tasted every part of her, letting her know that I loved her, _all of her_, that I always had and that I always would—but as I looked into those shimmering blue eyes of hers and saw her lips part a little as she reached for me, stroking her fingertips along my sides in a silent demand for contact and completion, I knew that all of that would have to wait.

"Booth," she sighed as I settled in between her legs and felt her rock her hips and press against me so that she could feel how hard I was as I brushed against the crook of her thigh.

"Bones," I whispered back, my heart pounding in my chest as I felt the smooth skin of her thighs pressing against my hips.

Perhaps I could have said something to her ("Are you ready?" or "Are you sure?") but I didn't, because at that point, we were well beyond words, and in the silence, we understood each other.

I knew what that she was ready.

That I was ready.

That we were _both_ ready.

We'd been working our way to that point, to that moment, for nearly seven years. We had waited long enough, and come close to losing it all—to losing each other—so many times. If losing Vincent had taught us anything that day, it was that life was too short.

Too short to wait...

Too short to waste another moment with words when that moment could be made real if we were only willing to risk that last measure of ourselves.

I took a short breath and, without so much as another word, sank into her, closing my eyes as I closed the space between us and gave myself to her as I felt her give herself to me. She felt so incredibly amazing—so soft, so wet, so snug and warm and perfect. Each time I rocked back, I drew a deep breath and then slowly slid into her with a long, throaty sigh, again and again and again until I fell into a settled rhythm that let me let go of my mind and lose myself completely in the experience of her.

I opened my eyes and watched her arch her neck back into my pillow with a sigh, and the room filled with the sounds of our breathing and the whispery _oooh_'s and _ahhh_'s that swelled into _ohhhhh_'s and _mmmmm_'s as we found our voices. Each time I rose up into her, she rolled up and met me, matching me and pulling me deeper inside of her than I could have taken myself on my own.

I don't know how long we moved against one another, each of us sinking ourselves into the other. There was no time and there were no words and, after a while, there wasn't a _me_ and a _her_ anymore, just an _us_ and a _now_ and feeling that everything we'd said and everything we'd done and all that all of it had felt like at the time didn't matter anymore because there was only _us _and _now _and only this, _this, _was real.

The only sounds that passed between us came as grunted cries as each of us shattered, one after the other. Her voice peaked _ahhh ahhh uhhhh uhhhhh unnnnnnhhhh _when I felt her back arch and her snug warmth clench hard around me as she shuddered, fluttering around me as she rode out her release with a long sigh.

She fell silent with one last dreamy murmur and reached for me, dragging her nails down my sweaty back until those fingers of hers came to rest on my hips as she pulled me into her. As soon as I felt those nails of hers scrape down my back, I knew I was at the end of my rope. I summoned up everything I had left at that point and rolled my hips back and drove as deep as I could into her, coming to rest balls-deep inside of her seconds before I broke. I closed my eyes and let go with a quiet grunt and an _ummmmfff _as she held me there, my hips flush and snug against hers until I'd emptied myself into her.

After a minute, as my heaving breaths slowed to something resembling normal, I opened my eyes and found her looking up at me, her eyes heavy-lidded but bright as she smiled and gave a contented murmur. I leaned into one hand as I wiped the sweat from my brow with my forearm and the swirling, spinning of my mind finally slowed to the point that I felt my chest fill with warmth as I smiled back at her.

Still, though, neither of us said anything, not even when I rolled off of her and collapsed against the bed, drawing my arm back as she sighed and took her place, curled up against my side, her head resting against my shoulder as she began to draw lazy circles on my chest with her finger.

Everything we wanted, we had.

Everywhere we'd wanted to be, we were.

Everything was, in that moment, as it should be.

We knew that, soon enough, the sun would come up and with it, everything we had to do that day would clamor for our attention. Both of us knew it but neither of us spoke of it because all of that would be waiting for us, with or without words.

So we just lay there, content to enjoy that last measure of silence before it all began again, knowing that after all the words we'd spoken between us, we finally closed the distance between us at the point that words failed us.

* * *

**A/N: **_Hmmm. So, what did you think? I hope it added something to the collective "hive mind" about how that moment transpired, and I hope, in any case, that you enjoyed it._

_Don't leave me guessing. Share your thoughts as I've shared mine. Please, please consider leaving a review. Psychic revenue is the only kind I make from this. Reviews feed the muse. Leave her (him?) a little morsel to munch on :-)_


	15. Unexpected

**Age of Discovery**

* * *

**By: **dharmamonkey  
**Story Rating: **M  
**Chapter Rating:** T

**Disclaimer: **I don't own Bones. I am, however, interested in renting Booth. A five-hour minimum would apply.

* * *

**A/N: **_Another missing scene, of course. (That's what "Age of Discovery" is all about, right?) Well, this one didn't leave us wanting as much as the missing scene I furnished in Chapter 14 did, but at least for me, what follows is one that held sway over my imagination as we waited for the Season 7 premiere. Since Booth narrated the last three chapters, it's time for Brennan to have a chance. What better scene to let her narrate than this one? I hope you enjoy it._

* * *

**Chapter 15: Unexpected**

* * *

In retrospect, it was foolish to expect it would have gone any other way.

We had been walking back to my apartment from the only free parking spot we could find on my street that was big enough to fit the Sequoia (since the street parking directly in front of my building tended to fill up rather quickly on Saturday nights). It wasn't a long walk, just a block and a half from the truck to my building, a defunct and long-abandoned brick warehouse that an enterprising developer had converted into loft apartments about ten years ago.

In reality, it was a short walk but, as we were walking, it felt like miles as each and every step brought with it a swirl of emotions I hadn't even begun to figure out how to deal with.

I suppose I was doing what Sweets would call "projecting"—taking my own fears and insecurities and ascribing them to Booth. I'd been emotional for weeks, ever since the day we lost Vincent and that same night when Booth and I made love for the first time. Over the course of the ensuing six weeks, Booth and I spent every night together, either at his apartment or mine, and I found myself feeling almost sentimental as I came to depend on the simple joy of waking up next to him every morning. I became particularly emotional as the weeks wore on, only to discover, five weeks after Vincent's death, the reason why.

I remember sitting there on the toilet in Booth's bathroom staring at the little white stick with the little plus symbol in the window and feeling like I was going to faint. I was pregnant. Everything was still so new and raw (and by the latter I mean not in a negative way but just in the sense that everything we did together—not just sexually but all of the mundane things like doing laundry and going to the grocery store—felt new and strangely different because I was doing them with him). I felt happy, happier than I'd ever felt before, but I also felt a latent current of anxiety because I wasn't sure how to be in a relationship and I was constantly afraid I'd do something wrong.

So I sat there on Booth's toilet looking at that pregnancy test, stunned by the result—which also seems foolish in retrospect, considering that my menstrual cycles were extremely regular and consistent ("like a Swiss watch," Angela said once) and I had a strong suspicion that I was pregnant after my period didn't begin during the two-day window when it was supposed to.

I shoved my hands into the pockets of my navy trench coat, unsure of how to proceed as we passed under the streetlight in front of my apartment building. I hadn't exactly come to a definitive conclusion as to how I felt about being pregnant, and I was very uncertain how he would feel about it when I told him. I was happy (I had wanted for several years to have a child, even after I decided not to go ahead with artificial insemination a couple of years ago) and I knew that Booth, too, wanted to have a child with me at some point in the future because we'd talked about it one night after making love.

That wasn't all, though. I was also scared—or at least deeply anxious—about whether I would be able to provide a child with the emotional nurturing needed to foster healthy psychological development, and I wasn't sure if Booth, too, would feel the kind of anxieties towards our child that I knew he felt from time to time about his relationship with his son Parker.

And a part of me felt, for lack of a better word, stupid. I'd been on oral contraceptives for years and I had never, ever missed a pill—except for the week that Vincent died. Amid the chaos and the crazy whirl of emotion that followed Vincent's death and Broadsky's capture, I missed two pills. As soon as I realized it, I consulted the instructions that came with the pack and took the two missed pills that same day, but it was apparently too late. Booth and I had not once used protection, because I was on the pill. That part of me that felt foolish for having failed to properly use contraception made me feel as though I'd let Booth down by getting pregnant.

I felt a lot of different emotions, all roiling around inside of me at the same time.

For nearly a week I held that secret, a secret which rightly wasn't mine to keep since the child I was now carrying was as much Booth's as mine. As Angela's due date came and went and we all waited for her to have her baby, I struggled over the best time and place and manner to tell him. It didn't seem right to tell him at night when we were laying in bed after making love, but for some reason it seemed equally awkward to tell him before we made love. I couldn't tell him in the morning, either—one thing I'd come to realize after a couple of weeks of spending the night with Booth was that he was sometimes groggy and cranky first thing in the morning, and on such days it was normally not a good idea to try to engage him in any kind of intelligent conversation until after he'd showered, shaved and had his first cup of coffee.

I felt extremely anxious sitting in the waiting room in the GW obstetrics department knowing that my best friend—well, my best female friend, that is—was in a room down the hall giving birth to her child. Booth saw the worried expression on my face and sat down in the chair next to me, putting his arm around me as he whispered, _"It's gonna be okay, Bones. Everybody's gonna be fine." _He thought he was reassuring me about Angela and her baby, but my racing mind and churning gut took his words as what I really needed most in that moment—reassurance that _I _would be okay, and that _we _would be fine.

I had never felt more anxious in all my life as I did when I stood there on the sidewalk in front of my building and told Booth, _"I'm pregnant." _At first, he just looked at me blankly, his eyes dark and fixed as he stood there in complete silence. I wasn't sure if he was upset, confused, or just shocked, or maybe all three. After a couple of seconds, I found myself unnerved by the silence and by his lack of response, so I added, _"You're the father." _

Of course, that was self-evident. Booth was the only man I'd had sex with in quite some time, and for the last six weeks, we had been very sexually active, making love each night and, with only a couple of exceptions, every morning. I didn't say it because I actually thought he had any doubt that I was monogamous. I'm not exactly sure why I said it—perhaps I said it as much for my benefit as for his, as if saying those words _"You're the father"_ somehow cemented the reality of the situation and made it real between us—but as soon as I uttered the word _"father_," I saw Booth's dark brown eyes brighten and the blank, straight-mouthed expression on his lips curve into a grin.

He drew a sharp breath and smiled the widest, brightest, toothiest smile I had ever seen from him, and I couldn't help but laugh as a wave of relief washed over me. All of those emotions that had been roiling around inside of me—the fear, the anxiety, the foolish feeling of gross incompetence for having become pregnant by accident—were still there, but softened by relief at knowing that Booth seemed pleased by my revelation.

He didn't say anything at first, but just uttered a soft laugh as he stepped towards me, wrapped his arms around me and pulled me against his chest, hugging me for a moment before he pulled away and brushed his palm over the side of my head. He just looked at me, those warm brown eyes of his shimmering with tears as his mouth fell open and he laughed again, this time less softly as his happy, tearful expression filled me with a warmth and an ecstatic relief that I hadn't anticipated in the wake of the worries that had been niggling at me all week.

We didn't say much as we walked into my building and rode the elevator up to my apartment. _"Oh my God, Bones, I can't believe it," _he'd said at the very same time I felt gut-flipping moment of buoyancy one always feels just before an elevator settles at the desired floor_. "I'm so happy," _he told me.

_"I'm so glad," _I replied, closing my eyes and sighing a little as I felt his lips press a soft, gentle kiss to my temple.

I don't know what I'd expected it would be like when we made love that night. I felt different somehow, not just about myself but about him, too. What we were before wasn't what we were now. I saw it in the way he looked at me when we came together that night—a warm glimmer in his eyes as he rolled onto his back and gazed up at me with a soft, peaceful smile as I rocked against him—and in the quiet laugh he sighed as he snaked his left arm around the back of my waist to palm my lower back while the rough, lightly calloused fingers of his right hand skimmed over my belly.

We had so much to discuss, and so much to think about (individually, and as a couple) but in that moment, in the five or six seconds that I felt the almost ticklish touch of his fingertips rub slow arcs across the curve of my as-yet still flat belly, I felt curiously secure that somehow or the other, Booth would help me find my way—_our_ way—through all the changes that would find their way to us whether we were ready for them or not.

"_Bones," _he whispered, swiping his thumb over my navel before bringing his hand up to trace a feather-light line along my side. I shivered as his hand passed over the round of my shoulder and his fingertips floated across the skin of my neck before those thick, strong fingers threaded into my hair while his rough thumb stroked over my cheek. I looked into his eyes and saw something flicker in their warm chocolate depths when his fingertips pressed into my scalp. His mouth opened with a little smile as he gently pulled my head down until I could feel his hot breath on my upper lip.

I felt a sudden flash of insecurity as his lips plucked at mine. I'm not sure where that feeling came from or why it struck me then—it seemed to come out of nowhere in the very same moment as I felt him surge up and into me—but though I felt the flutter of panic high in my chest, I felt something else, a certain freedom that only safety can provide, and it was in that space, in that moment, that the filter between my mind and my mouth failed me as my doubt came out in a broken croak.

"_I don't know if_—"

Booth's arm hugged me closer to him (though I'm not sure how that was even possible at that point) and his fingers curled around the edge of my pelvis as he rolled his hips up into me.

"_We will," _he murmured in the tiny space between our faces where our breaths swirled together into one. His certainty coiled around me and hugged my insecurities as tightly as his long, strong arm hugged my body, and it was then, at that moment, that I trembled and curled myself around him as I broke with a single peaking sigh a mere second before I felt him tense and melt into me from below.

"_We will..."_

* * *

A/N: _I'm not sure where that came from or whether it added much to the universal mind of Bonesthink, but there it is. I hope you found it of some value._

_Let me know what you thought of that. Share your thoughts as I've shared mine. _

_As always, thanks for reading. _


End file.
